Re: New Voynich Stuff

[Dennis <ixohoxi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

	Hi, Jason.  Pardon me, I got your name wrong.

Jason Morningstar wrote:
> 
> I've posted to the list several times, and have been following the various
> threads for quite a while.  The "polysyllabic information retrieval" stuff
> is mine, from an IR course I took earlier this year.  I'm currently
> working on a literature review related to the VMS, and intend to make it,
> in some fashion, the focus of my thesis.

	I'd be interested in the "information retrieval"
algorithms you have in mind.  

> I would tend to discount the content of those pages, which I generated
> before I had seen some of the EVMT low entropy stuff.

	Perhaps you mean

Understanding the Second-Order Entropies of Voynich
Text
by Dennis J. Stallings
http://www2.micro-net.com/~ixohoxi/voy/mbpaper.htm

I did discuss natural languages, including Hawai'ian,
that have low entropies in phonemic notation.

	You also like monkeys.  By all means download one of
our principal tools, MONKEY:

http://web.bham.ac.uk/G.Landini/evmt/monkey.zip

Try the "generate text" mode, in which MONKEY apes the
text file input.  Very much like "monkeys typing
Shakespeare".  In fact, try inputting a Shakespeare
file, and that's what you'll get! In fact MONKEY is for
calculating the conditional entropies of text; my paper
is the result of much such MONKEY business.

Dennis


> Best Regards,
> 
> Jason
> 
> ----------
> Jason Morningstar
> School of Information and Library Science
> UNC Chapel Hill
> 
> On Sat, 28 Oct 2000, Dennis wrote:
> 
> >       Any opinions on the "genuinely worthwhile stuff"?
> >
> >       There' a lot to consider at Tugba's site.
> >
> >       I'm not sure what Joyce means by "polysyllabic", but
> > it sounds like the natural languages with low phonemic
> > entropy that I & Gabriel considered in "Understanding
> > the Second-Order Entropies of Voynich Text".  Her note,
> > "To date, no one has attempted to use information
> > retrieval formulae to investigate the possibility of an
> > unconventional (non-western) underlying structure" is
> > of more interest.  I wonder what information retrieval
> > formulae she has in mind.
> >
> >       On this page which I didn't notice:
> >
> > http://ils.unc.edu/%7Emornj/inls172-01.htm
> >
> > she proposes to poll us list members on our information
> > needs.
> >
> > Dennis
> >
> > Dennis wrote:
> >
> > >         First the genuinely worthwhile:
> > >
> > > -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > > A very interesting site:
> > >
> > > Statistical Analysis of Voynich Manuscript
> > > http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~tugba/voynich/
> > >
> > > by Tugba Onal Suzek,
> > > http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~tugba/
> > > Grad Student at John's Hopkins
> > >
> > >         Quite a few statistical analyses, some of which we
> > > haven't done, such as beam search, and languages we
> > > haven't investigated, such as Czech, Hungarian,
> > > Slovene, Estonian, and Romanian.
> > >
> > > Another interesting site:
> > > Univariate Terms Project
> > > INLS 172, Jason Morningstar
> > >
> > > http://www.ils.unc.edu/~mornj/inls172-02.htm
> > >
> > >     "To date, no one has attempted to use information
> > > retrieval
> > > formulae to investigate the possibility of an
> > > unconventional (non-
> > > western) underlying structure. It is possible that
> > > measures derived
> > > from this investigation will allow researchers to
> > > dismiss this avenue
> > > of approach altogether. Alternately, the results might
> > > signal a need
> > > for further research. No matter what the outcome, the
> > > groundwork laid
> > > by this project will prove useful for future research
> > > into the
> > > possibility of an logographic source.
> > >
> > >     "It is important to note that a correlation with a
> > > polysyllabic
> > > language model does not imply that the manuscript was
> > > necessarily
> > > written in Hawaiian or Yupik - given the commonly
> > > understood
> > > provenance of the Voynich manuscript, this would be
> > > impossible.
> > > However, the 14th through 16th centuries saw the
> > > creation of many
> > > artificial languages in Europe, including those of John
> > > Dee and
> > > Hildegard Von Bingen. It is possible that the
> > > underlying Voynich text
> > > is similarly constructed, but using a novel
> > > polysyllabic structure."
> >