Re: VMs: Latin abbreviations

[Gordon Rugg <g.rugg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Gabriel,

Points taken, and I'm aware that you have tackled the implications of most of
these points yourself in the past, but some of the newer group members might be
helped by a brief review of some relevant arguments, so here goes, with apologies
to those members who've seen this more than once before.

The VMS might build on Latin shorthands by deliberately removing the ambiguities
in those shorthands, while keeping some of the concepts and/or symbols. This  is
what I was trying to get at with the reference to word structures within
Voynichese. With the degree of structural constraint within Voynichese words, it
would be easier to use the same symbol to represent unambiguously different things
depending on its place in the "word". This would be particularly well suited to
use with Latin, where the word endings are often predictable from context - for
instance, the endings of nouns after prepositions, where a single symbol could be
used as shorthand for "the appropriate suffix for this word after that
preposition". This would allow a single symbol such as "y" to stand in for a large
number of word endings unambiguously, though in other contexts it might be
necessary to spell out the ending at length to resolve ambiguity. It may not be
what Latin shorthands actually did, but a case can be made for this being what the
VMS' creator did. I think there are discussions of this in the archives - it would
make sense of the low number of different final characters in Voynichese words
compared to medial characters, but there are various objections to it, which
require more space than is convenient in this brief note....

The point about  modern versus premodern shorthands is also taken; modern
shorthands are a bit of a separate issue, but it's conceivable that the VMS does
involve a code which the creator could read while the content was still fairly
fresh in the creator's mind, but which became unreadable later because the creator
couldn't remember which was the correct reading of an ambiguous text, as in the
case of the secretaries. Some of the proto-writings of West Africa were used in
the same sort of aide-memoire way (there are examples in Dillinger's book on the
alphabet). I don't personally think this is terribly likely as an explanation for
the VMS, but thought it was worth mentioning as a curiosity which could possibly
be of use to some group member some day.

Best wishes,

Gordon


Gabriel Landini wrote:

> Hi Gordon et al,
> On Thursday 10 July 2003 14:48, Gordon Rugg wrote:
> > I think the key issue here is whether the shorthand method is unambiguous
> > or not.
>
> Maybe the existence of Cappelli's dictionary has something to do with it? :-)
>
> > If the same symbol is only used in places where there's no possible
> > ambiguity
>
> They are obviously not, and that is the poin I am trying to make.
> <n> means different things depending where it is and whether it is preceded by
> <i> or by <ii>, etc. However, when you estimate entropy, this does not count
> at all, as it is the same character. Therefore, either:
> you know the position rule and you read them differently, or
> you don't and think that they are all the same (hence apparent redundancy).
>
> > more characters. In English, for instance, it would be possible to use the
> > same character (say, "9") to represent both the sound we transcribe as "h"
> [...]
>
> Yes, sure, but that seems to be not the rule with latin abbreviations. They
> are *not* a single type of abbreviation (Cappelli uses classification of 6
> types).
> I think that there is a case to suspect some position-dependent coding given
> that there are so easily detectable suffixes and prefixes.
>
> > A study by Susan Kelliher
> > found that shorthand secretaries were unable to read most of their own
> > shorthand records a few months after writing them - the shorthand was being
> > read partly as script, but also partly as aide-memoire, and after a few
> > months much of the secretary's memory of what had been said was gone.
>
> Are current shorthand method comparable to what we are talking about?
>
> > Gordon (who does not believe that VMS "9" is really likely to represent "h"
> > and "ng", just in case anyone's wondering...)
>
> :-) That's fine. I do not know whether seemingly redundant abbreviated
> language is what the vms is about, but having bought Cappelli some time ago,
> I think it is a shame not to bring the subject up.
>
> Just don't take my word, try to get a copy from a library and see for yourself
> how arbitrary these can be. There was one something like iiii  (call me
> redundant!) for "in integrum". Would you be able to guess it?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Gabriel
>
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