Turkish theory (was: Voynich research needs)

[Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

    > [John Grove:] "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.
    
Yes, I suppose so.  (Does Hungarian have vowel harmony, too?) 
    
    > 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...)
    
But that is exactly my point: if Voynichese is Turkish, each
Voynichese word must be a single Turkish headword or suffix. This
assumption is practically mandated by the word-length statistics, and
is necessary to explain the gallows-bit correlation as resulting from
vowel harmony.

    > Does this mean you're ready to give up that pizza?
    
Yeah, I am now expecting to lose that bet 8-(  

Methinks that, in fairness, the pizza should be due only when and if
the Chinese theory is satisfactorily disproved. One way to do that, of
course, is to find a convincing non-Chinese solution. If you think
that this criterion is too demanding, please suggest another one.
(Perhaps we should nominate an arbiter?)

    > Some of those Altaic languages border on China - so maybe your
    > pizza bet is still vaguely safe--with say the Tungusic
    > languages like Manchu?

Thanks, I will pass that suggestion to my lawyer... 8-)

All the best,

--stolfi