Re: VMs: Arguments against a code book?

[Dennis <tsalagi@xxxxxxxx>]

Bruce Grant wrote:
> 
> >Actually the resemblance between Herbal-A and Herbal-B is much greater
> >than what would seem from this listing, because many of the Voynichese
> >words listed above *do* occur in the other language, only with
> >different frequency; whereas most of the Italian words above
> >
> >  che,di,il,un,la,con,l',le,d',ma,era(?),più,del,da,gli,come,è,
> >  i,al,se(?),quel,s',don,io,lo,della,renzo,disse,due,suo(?),o,aveva
> >
> >are not valid Latin words, and vice-versa
> >
> >  quod,est,ut,vel,quam,qui,sed,quia,autem,habet,sunt,secundum,
> >  hoc,potestatem,ab,potest,nec,propter,tamen,principatus,ergo,
> >  plures,quae,cum,potestatis,enim,plenitudinem,fidelium
> 
> This seems like a very interesting situation. It suggests to me what you
> might see if 1) two different writers were applying the same ciphering
> scheme independently, and 2) if it is not the particular words but some
> _feature_ of the words that conveyed the meaning.

	This is what you see with homophonic ciphers and
codes, of course.   

> To give an approximate idea of what I am trying to suggest, think of two
> people spelling English words using a phonetic alphabet of the type
> airline pilots use. To spell the word "APPLE" one person might say "ABLE
> PAUL PAUL LEO EDWARD" and another might say "ABLE PETER PETER LEO
> EASY".  In other words, they may be choosing from the same universe of
> acceptable words but making different choices of particular words to
> according to their whim.
> 
> Of course, in view of the large number of different words, the
> significant feature would probably be something more than a single
> letter of the word ... perhaps each word represents a syllable, for example.

	Again, this is what I had thought.  But are the
Voynichese 'word' frequencies consistent with this?

Dennis
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