Re: VMs: Voynichese as an Abugida

[william edmondson <w.h.edmondson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi again.
On 26 Jul 2004, at 17:18, Koontz John E wrote:

> On Mon, 26 Jul 2004, william edmondson wrote:
> > Interesting post.  I too have wondered about syllabic representations.
>
> Thanks.  That's what I was wondering - whether anyone else has pursued 
> an
> approach like this and could save me some trouble by poking holes in 
> it!
>
> > A few thoughts of encouragement.  Don't be put off by the apparently
> > large number of syllables in English.  The figures may be high for 
> > text
> > but nothing like so high for actual sounds.
>
> Even if the approach to the analysis of sounds was based on a standard
> Roman orthography, you can simplify matters extensively by using the
> abugida approach, which eliminates the need to code closed syllables.
> Some kinds of closings or codas can be included, of course.  For 
> example,
> philosopher's stone, can be encoded in representations for 
> fi-lo-so-fe-r-s
> s-to-n or fi-lo-so-fer-s s-ton.  The second version assumes that the -r
> and -n codas are included within the representational units.  Of 
> course,
> as I've pointed out, unless I'm missing something, it doesn't look like
> there are enough consonants or vowels to accomodate English.  Even
> orthographic English requires five vowels, even if we ignore 
> diphthongs.

We should not assume English, surely.  Most of the people 
envisaged/fingered as possible authors spoke/used at least two 
languages.  Latin is reasonably predictable phonetically isn't it?  
What would your abugida approach yeild for latin?


> If the encoding of the representations involved discrete, 
> character-like
> entities, and these were written in the opposite of production order,
> e.g., as if-ol-os-ef-r-s s-ot-n, it would certainly complicate matters 
> for
> folks who were looking for a character-based encoding.
>
> For that matter, when did pig latin and such word games first appear?
> I've heard of people who could rattle off pig latin versions of English
> at conversational speeds.

I've heard of such - and kids can apparently do it.

> > Couple this with the fact that naive intuitions regarding syllables 
> > can
> > be good - the written form for Cherokee, if I recall correctly, was
> > invented by a non-linguist and serves well - and it seems likely that
> > someone of, say, Kelly's abilities would have no trouble devising a
> > serviceable syllabary for, say, Latin or other European 'phonetic'
> > languages.
>
> I don't believe Sequoiah was even literate before he developed the
> Cherokee syllabary.  He did understand the concept of literacy, 
> clearly,
> and produced a nice workmanlike reverse engineering of the technology 
> in a
> new context.  Brilliant, and a lot of hard work.
>
> > We should note that the consonant vowel distinctions in semitic
> > languages are managed independently for morphological reasons 
> > (patterns
> > of vowels are morphemes, and interleave with patterns of consonants, 
> > as
> > morphemes).  We would not expect to find that in VMS if it is a
> > rendering of anything other than Hebrew/Arabic.
>
> I believe four grades in a series (zero, a, i, u) would suffice to
> represent most Semitic languages.  Or Greelandic Eskimo, for that 
> matter.
> However, Semitic languages have relatively large consonant sets, so the
> number of series I've suggested or at least recognized seems 
> insufficient.
> Greenlandic, however, has fewer consonants, something more like the 
> number
> of series in Voynichese - p t k q v s g r m n ng l, if I recall
> correctly.  Of course, I'm not suggesting Voynichese is Greenlandic!
> For one thing the maximum word length would be a lot more than 10.

:-)  -  I'm not sure Kelly or whomever would have dreamed up an 
incorporating language like W.Greenlandic with huge words.  And there 
are not so many examples to look at.  The structure of the VMS 'words' 
looks like fairly conventional suffixing morphology.  Did anyone try 
substitutions using the symbols from the abbreviations dictionary 
Gabriel mentions?  Are there any sample page transcriptions with every 
possible substitution dropped in?  Are the abbreviations in the 
dictionary syllabic Gabriel?

The patterns of word lengths are one feature which strikes me as odd 
about VMS.  I'd love to see a careful comparison with other written 
languages like Latin.  Did anyone out there do that?

> It occurs to me that you could represent a Semitic language by placing 
> the
> consonant frame and prefix/suffix/vocalic pattern in sequence 
> separately,
> rather than intermingling them, if you had a philological turn of mind.
> That, too would be confusing to decode if the wrong assumptions were 
> made
> about the nature of the input string.
>
> > I'd go for consonants with distinct symbols, plus some sort of simple
> > minded coding for vowel sounds (or even their omission).
>
> Me, too.  Of course the acid test is a decoding ...
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Cheers

William
Dr William Edmondson
School of Computer Science
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston B15 2TT
UK

Voice: +44-121-414-4763
email: w.h.edmondson@xxxxxxxxxx

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