Re: VMs: Lines as functional units

[Dennis <tsalagi@xxxxxxxx>]

	Welcome, Mike!  Two brief comments.

Mike Stannett wrote:
> 
> 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.

	List member Adam Mclean, the world's greatest
authority on 
Western alchemy, said that the VMs is not an alchemical
work.  It 
could have been influenced by alchemical ideas, but
from what Adam 
said, that must not have been too substantial.  Search
"Adam Mclean"
in :
http://www.geocities.com/ctesibos/voynich/precednt.html

> 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.

	In general, my statistics indicate that the VMs'
repetitive 
nature isn't due to repetitive verbiage.  Search
"Repetitive Texts" in
http://www.geocities.com/ctesibos/voynich/mbpaper.htm

The repetitiveness rather is in the internal structure
of the words.

Dennis
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