Re: Voynich research needs

["John Grove" <4groves@xxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <voynich@xxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, August 26, 2000 7:29 PM
Subject: Re: Voynich research needs
> > There is one language family that may fit the bill.  In Turkish and
> other related languages (e.g. Uzbek), many concepts that are expressed
> by separate words in English are realized as suffixes (usually one
syllable
> long) attached to some "head" word.  Moreover, the vowels are divided into
> two sets, "front" and "back"; and the suffixes must always use vowels
> of the same class as those of the head word.

    Does this mean you're ready to give up that pizza?  Well, first I'd like
to quote Katzner's Languages of the World: "As in all Altaic languages, most
Turkish words adhere to the principle of vowel harmony -- that is, all the
vowels in a given word belong to the same class (front or back) and any
suffixes added generally contain vowels of the same class."

    Now, Altaic includes quite a wide variety - and the above statement
seems to suggest all Altaic languages[Not just the Turkic ones] have the
same Front/Back vowel sets. Some of those Altaic languages border on China -
so maybe your pizza bet is still vaguely safe-- with say the Tungusic
languages like Manchu?

    Nonetheless, I agree that the Turkic languages hold certain agreeable
possibilities... The Arabic influence in the writing system (back to the
lack of doublets again, or even the Titles at the bottom of the pages), the
Turkish Public Baths and Jorge's 'Front vowel indicating Gallows'.  All,
unfortunately circumstantial and heavily dependant on one's perception. Gut
feel doesn't quite make it a good theory.  But, I like it. So what sort of
statistics do we have for Turkic languages?

    One problem I see is word-length due to the fact that Turkish keeps
adding those suffixes making some long words that might extend beyond the
average word length we're looking for(unless they were written as
syllables...)
Again from Katzner's : "Yurt ormanlariyla yesil, yurt dagbaslariyla mavi"

    Lastly, among the Turkic languages are a few that certainly venture into
Eastern Europe and would be in an acceptable geographic region for the VMS.

    John