RE: VMs: Currier A and B

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi GC,

>   The real problem here is that Currier chose the words "language" and
> "hand" in his description of statistical similarities.  Much like my
> personal problem with "character" and "letter", "language" and "hand" mean
> different things to different people, even when the context for their use is
> evident as statistical, not real.  "Language" in these arguments does not
> imply a difference in spoken or written language, and Rene makes this point
> as well.  "Hand" does not signify that someone has actually determined that
> this was another writer.  These are Currier's definitions for statistical
> "language" and apparent "hand", nothing more.  I sincerely wish we could
> come up with better and less confusing terms for these things.  I've already
> introduced "glyph" to narrow the wide variation of perception about the
> actual transcription of a "character", maybe someone else can find something
> to mark differences in "language"?

Howabout:-

        "language"      ==> "Voynichese", the linguistic/crypto system
        "dialect"       ==> each major behaviour-grouping we find
((  &   "hand"          ==> each major rendering-style we find ))

I think this is fair, as even though there are plainly differences between 
these dialects, they do all seem to operate within a reasonably coherent 
linguistic/cryptological whole.

Trying to separate out and then produce a relational map of the dialects 
should give us a deeper insight into the internal structure of the 
language: but we will all benefit from trying to do this collaboratively. 
We all agree that various dialects exist within the text - but can the 
differences between those dialects be reduced to a definitive set of rules 
we all agree on?

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....

PS: IIRC, Currier suspected a line formed a conceptual unit because 
line-initial and line-final characters/glyphs have different stats from 
those inside a line. However, I don't recall his suggesting that each line 
potentially used a separate dialect? 


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