Re: VMs: Blanks: trying to summarize...

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Maurizio,

At 19:37 05/03/2004 +0100, Maurizio wrote:
> At 12:20 05/03/2004 +0000, Nick Pelling wrote:
> > However, AIUI Voynichese words generally have a very low instance count, 
> > which is hard to reconcile with their being part of a language (whether 
> > real or artificial).
>
> (AIUI? If it is an acronim, I cannot resolve it).

AIUI = "As I Understand It". :-)

> There are at least two elements to be taken into consideration:
>
> 1) if the language is flected, each form of each word has a lower instance 
> count than the word globally taken. I mean: for instance, in a Latin text 
> about Caesar, you would find _Ceasar_, _Caesaris_, _Caesari_, etc. each 
> with a lower count than the word "Caesar" in the English equivalent. And 
> some languages even change the initial part of the word (not necessarily 
> exotic languages: Welsh is one and, if I am not mistaken, Polish is another).

The apparently boundless ability of natural languages to corroborate even 
the unlikeliest of theories has made it hard to rule anything out here. 
However, the key problem with seeing the VMs as a possibly natural language 
is that its words often seems more (for want of a better word) 
'combinatorial' - more akin to an exotic numbering system (like 
"turbo-charged Roman numerals") than to an actual language per se.

> 2) I don't know if someone tried to count words only in portions of 
> running texts, excluding for example texts, labels and sequences in the 
> figures which might have a different nature.

I've certainly always tried to exclude labels when doing word searches, & 
would guess that many others here do much the same. However, note that the 
type field in the transcription's line header is somewhat inconsistent 
between pages, and could really do with an overhaul to make it more useful 
for filtering. :-(

> On the other hand, the Fontana mss. also show spaces. Maybe, a spaceless 
> cypher would be thought too problematic for such long texts?

IMO, the Fontana cipher seems more for showmanship than for security - 
circa 1420, what he used was very far from state-of-the-art cryptography. 
The VMs seems to be playing in a different league entirely. :-o

> Are you hinting as half-spaces as distinct from spaces? Two kinds of 
> spaces with potentially different meanings? I think we have enough 
> problems with a single kind of spaces!!

Hoping that they're both the same thing doesn't halve the number of 
problems. :-o

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling..... 


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