VMs: Glyphset ramblings

["Barbara Barrett" <barbarabarrett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Aside: Hy guys, it's good to be back ;-)

> > Jeff Jotted;
> > What theory does anyone have about
> > the core ideas or characters from which the glyphs were originally
derived?

> Dennis Dotted;
> I think these three are generally accepted.
>
> 1) Early Arabic numerals and medieval Latin
> abbreviations, as mentioned by D'Imperio and seen in
> Capelli;
> 2) Early Renaissance cipher scripts, as seen in
> Trandechino; and
> 3) Medieval gallows-style letter embellishment, as I
> show in a later reply to Petr Kazil.
>
> Other elements, such as Tironian notae, astrological
> or alchemical symbols, etc. are much more
> controversial.


Barbara Babbles;
The above have similarities, but so does early greek document hand (BC to
1st millenium); pi looks like t (eva) and the old form of Upsilon inverted
becomes l (eva), there are remarkable style symilaries to Carolinginan and
Mervoingian miniscules too (7 - 9th C). Also 7thC arabic, some syratic, and
a few characters in palmaryan.

Epigraphically the simmilarity of forms is irrelevent for two reasons.

One is that given similar materieals and writing methods indipendent
creation of the same or similar letterforms is almost inevitable (EG:
unrelated
"runic" writings exist from China to Iceland - the medium - grained wood -
and the writing tool - a sharp implement - demanded that similar forms would
be independently devised - note that while the graphemes are the same the
phonemes they represent are different). Therefore similarity of letterforms
imparts no worthwile information.

Second is even *if* (and it's a very big if) the VMS author(s) borrowed
letterforms known to them, then it is highly unlikly (given that they
obviously intended the contents to be
confidential) that they would also borrow the phonemic or semantic symbology
too - however it it possible that the original form's meaning might provided
a clue to the VMS meaning via a memnonic - but such a memnonic would not
exist outside the mind of the user and is useless too us as it is unknown
and unknowable. A bit like trying to solve a cryptic crossword without the
clues.

I belive that looking (and even finding) similar letterforms to the VMS is a
dead duck, a blind ally, the expolration of which is ultimatly futile. They
can not either provided clues to the meaning of VMS letters, or be of any
relevent in dating the VMS, for the reasons stated above.

In epigraphy, similar letterforms are only given weight when a linear
progression from a previous script can be shown, and even then treated
very cautiously as possabilities rather than probabilities. As the VMS has
no
precedents, this line of investigation is fruitless.

Personally I find such similarities a curiosity, but only a curiosity, and
discount them as being of any use for decyphering the VMS.

These days I'm discovering interesting relationships between the letterforms
in their means of construction in document hand. For example (deviating from
EVA here) the 4o ligature and the 4P "gallows" are one and the same
consruction-wise - the diffences being hight above the base line and the
continuation of the final cross -loop stroke back down to the baseline in
the 4P form (unessesary in the word-initial form as the o is on the
baseline and the 4 a descender).

I suspect the the 4P is the paragraph-initial and medial form of the
word-initial 4o and these contitute a single grapheme unit. but further
investigations are needed to see if this is indeed so. IE I need to find an
eample where this is not the case - for having formulated the theory I'm now
obliged to find evidence to disprove it! For it's only by finding an absence
of a different usage that the idea beomes plausable.

There are others but until I get my hands of a copy of the VMS and check
every single page I can not say if these relationships are anything more
than "apparent". These relationships need more thurough testing that I can
give them at the momemt..

My own theory is that that voynichese is a writing system, one wich uses a
"logic" unknown to us. As such no amount of cryptography can possibly
"crack" it. So my own invistigaton (preceding from the *assumptuion*) that
it is a writing system is to unlock how that writing system works; eg I
think the repeated words are not cryptographic nulls but integral to the
orthography as either puncutualtion or grammer (eg a thrice repeated word
could simply be a plural form. Doubles could be comas, stops, or starts;
sets of repeats could be isolating clauses). Likewise I think each letter
has more than one purpose depending upon word possition. In Labels I'm
convinced that "o" is a grammatical type marker, but a phoneme or phonemes
within the body text.

Knowing how the system works will not in itself decipher it, but may provide
a key for doing so.

Barbara










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