Re: VMs: [LONG] Voynich & semiotics (early notes)

[Jacques Guy <jguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

8/09/2003 7:07:23 PM, Dennis <tsalagi@xxxxxxxx> wrote:


>Gabriele Ferri wrote:
...

>	Great!

Dennis, for a fleeting moment, you made me think of the
Brotherhood of Steel guard in Fallout 1. Isn't that
semiotically significant?

>> c) the "fake theory": someone believes that the VMS is actually glossolalia?
>> has a synopsis of such theory been written? is there any statistical
>> analysis proving or disproving this theory?

>	I don't know of a statistical analysis of this. 
>Finding transcripts of glossalalia with which to
>conduct such an analysis is very difficult.

I have such a tape. "Channelled". I certainly will not
transcribe it.
 
First, my ear tells me that it is glossolia.

Second, that the model is Hebrew; it sounds like
  Hebrew, not Israeli Hebrew, but the Hebrew chanted
  in a synagogue.

Third, my knowledge of Hebrew tells me that it is not
  Hebrew. There is the occasional short sequence
  of sounds that could match a Hebrew word, but what
  is around it makes no sense at all.

Without point 3 above, how could I tell it was 
glossolalia? 

And then again, how can I tell that the litanies of the
Holy Virgin are not glossolalia? Because they can
be broken down into words that exist in Latin/French, and
make up phrases that make sense? Come again.
What sense is there in "Hail Mary, the Starfish"?
(Ave Maria, Stella Maris)

>> d) could the VMS be written in an artificial language? has anyone
>> investigated this possibility?

>Since the Voynich
>text has much morphological, and probably syntactic,
>structure, but doesn't fit any known natural language

Sorry, that has been discussed time and again, and I
have brought here many example of natural languages
which exhibited at least one of the features of Voynichese.
About <qo> I have brought in Fijian, where <y> is always
followed by <a> and occurs only word-initially. I won't
repeat it all here, I would very probably leave too many out.
So far, believe it or not, Chinese is the best fit
phonotactically, as Jorge Stolfi, to his woe, knows.

>an artificial language is an obvious default.  I don't
>think a detailed analysis of a known artificial
>language for comparison with Voynichese has been done. 
>Antoine Casanova wrote a doctoral thesis in which he
>concluded that the VMs is in four, and possibly six,
>artificial languages.

I am skeptical. Why artificial? Cryptologia has published
an article of mine where I claim that <o> and <e> occur
in mutually exclusive distribution in "languages" A and B.
That is, where you find <o> in one, you tend to find <e>
in the other. Such alternances are typical of very many
natural languages.

If it is an artificial language, then it has all the
hallmarks of natural ones. Like, say, Esperanto has.


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