RE: VMs: Re: Currier A and B

["GC" <glenclaston@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Nick wrote:

> FYI, I'm currently trying to understand the dialects independent of the
> apparent word structure (because I don't trust it to be meaningful): of
> course, <-edy> vs <-ody> is one such thing, where <od> seems to be the
> heart of the difference. However, if you parse out the main set of pairs
> beginning with <o->, you also end up with a lot of <cho>'s and <sho>'s in
> the second group, which all seem much like part of the same thing.

I take you to mean Herbal-A [ha] and Herbal-B [hb] when referencing
"dialects".  Our mutual problem is that when we speak of "digraphs" or
"trigraphs", these definitions are dependent on what we perceive as a
"glyph".  It would aid my understanding tremendously if you would cut me a
page the way you see these divisions, so I can view it in EVA font.  Sorry
about the need for visual perception here, but the VMS script is all about
visual perception.  We have some relative agreement on "am", "c9", "89",
etc., and though we haven't nailed down the whole bailiwick (or should I say
"baillifwik" in 15ce style), we're certainly getting closer.  I'd like to
not only understand, but aid you in your study of "pairification", as I
think it is very much in line with what I'm doing at present.

As to the "word" structure being untrustworthy, this is of course a
possibility, but other than my perceived problem of "half spaces", I have no
evidence to alter the script from the way it is written.  The divisions are
a definite physical characteristic of the script, and no less important to
note than the glyphs themselves, IMHO.  The ending glyphs usually have tails
or swirls, a visual element common in western writing.  There's a name for
this, but I can't remember it at the moment.  If the words were false
divisions, I'd expect a great deal more variation in this aspect, as certain
unexpected glyphs should also have these additions.  There are 13 top
contenders between [ha] and [hb] for word endings, and they total 97% of the
common glyphs that end words.  All of these are regularly written with tails
or swirls.  One would expect that a pairified table would include more than
3% of ending glyphs that did not have tails, and if these glyphs eventually
occurred as "fake" word endings, they should be similarly embellished I
would think.  In fact we find that the "c" glyph has a tail at the end of a
word only one time in the herbal section.  This could be easily dismissed as
a subconscious response on the part of the author, who was accustomed to
writing word ending glyphs with embellishments.

Against that argument I have recorded instances where varied glyphs are in
the middle of words without embellishment but occur at the end of a word
with embellishment.  Your "m" is one of these, and "n" more often I think
than "m". None of this negates your theory, but some of it needs to be
explained in any theory, mine included.

I DO think it a good idea to look at the VMS without spaces for many things.
I'd be interested to see what questions you ask.

GC




> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx]On
> Behalf Of Nick Pelling
> Sent: Saturday, July 19, 2003 7:56 PM
> To: vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: RE: VMs: Re: Currier A and B
>
>
> Hi GC,
>
> >Picking a page at random, say 34v -
> >Here's how the lines break down - this is accurate but slightly
> generalized,
> >since the difference between a1 and b2 on these pages is keyed
> not directly
> >to lines themselves, but to another factor, heh heh.
> >
> >Line 1 b2   Line 4 b2   Line 7 a1   Line 10 a1
> >Line 2 a1   Line 5 b2   Line 8 b2   Line 11 b2
> >Line 3 a1   Line 6 a1   Line 9 a1
>
> Just a quick observation: f34v is one of the pages I've noted as having
> free-standing <l>'s. FWIW, I now parse <qo> before <ol>, and so
> view <qol>
> as <qo> + free-standing <l>.
>
> On f34v, these lines contain free-standing <l>'s:
>          4       in <qol>
>          5       first character on line
>          6       <lr>, a very curious-looking (non-)pair of characters
>          9       first character on line
>
> FYI, I'm currently trying to understand the dialects independent of the
> apparent word structure (because I don't trust it to be meaningful): of
> course, <-edy> vs <-ody> is one such thing, where <od> seems to be the
> heart of the difference. However, if you parse out the main set of pairs
> beginning with <o->, you also end up with a lot of <cho>'s and <sho>'s in
> the second group, which all seem much like part of the same thing.
>
> The key question is: is this additional <-o> left-associative (ie, linked
> with the preceding <ch[e][e]> or <sh[e][e]>), right-associative
> (ie, linked
> with the following <-d>), or something else entirely that typically gets
> placed between the two?
>
> In this general vein, can anyone propose a set of rules to classify
> spaceless Voynichese into the various dialects? That is, without
> looking at
> word-lengths, vocabulary, or perhaps even at the statistical distribution
> of the characters/glyphs.
>
> Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....
>
>
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