VMs: Lines as functional units

["Mike Stannett" <m.stannett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

To: vms-list

Hiya - just joined the list, having read various papers and articles
at voynich.net/nu/com and linked sites, so I apologise if what I'm
about to say is simply repeating some well-known observation I've not
come across yet. As I understand it, some of the points that seem
particularly puzzling include

a) lines seem to be functional linguistic units
b) words tend to be short
c) this doesn't seem to be due to abbreviation
d) there are lots of repeated-word segments

It occurs to me that all of these features can be partially explained
by a single hypothesis: the inclusion of poetry/verse. I'm not
suggesting that the whole thing is in verse, of course, but that parts
of it may be. To support this hypothesis, here are some basic
observations:

1. Various alchemical works I've looked at seem to include verse. The
subject is sometimes a dedication to a patron (unlikely in a secret
book?), sometimes an explanation of what the text contains, and
sometimes odes to nature and the like. The practice wasn't confined to
esoteric books, but seems to have been common by the 16th and 17th
centuries (I've even seen verse about mathematical treatises). I don't
know to what extent the practice occurred in earlier centuries,
however.

2. The nature of verse entails a focus on line structure, so lines
would have a natural status as functional units. If the verse is based
on rhyme, then (even in a transliteration) we'd expect to see related
line-endings, and this would help to explain various <-aiin>
occurrences and the like. If the verse is based on metric structure,
this would force lines to contain roughly the same number of
syllables - thereby forcing down the length of words.  The best of
both worlds would be if both rhyme and metre were involved, as this
would give us a way to start finding syllables.

3. Repetition is more acceptable in verse than in prose (or
experimental lab notes), e.g. "my love is like a red red rose". Even
so, triple-repeats might be stretching it a bit, not to mention longer
ones.

Best wishes, Mike Stannett

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