VMs: Abbreviation (Re: Information lost!)

[Koontz John E <John.Koontz@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Another explanation has been given before. Some languages e.g. form the
> plural simply by doubling the words. Similarly, for what ever reason,
> doubling might be an aspect of the VMs's language.

For what it's worth, doubling is also a pluralization strategy in
abbreviations in European languages, though I don't see the doubling that
occurs as particularly reminiscent of that.

Actually, something that's been bothering me recently, under the
admittedly rather plebeian assumption that the VMs is written in some
language relevant to the time and place that the default or main line of
investigation suggests - the Voynich Hypothesis, is that there is so
little clear evidence of abbreviation.  Abbreviation, using certain
standard techniques, was part and parcel of preparing finished manuscripts
and even public inscriptions throughout the period before printing, and
had been from Classical times on.  It seems especially likely to figure in
a private notebook.

The usual techniques involved

- omission of letters, medially and finally, with and without accompanying
marks, often a bar above the point or area of omission(s), or a flourish
attached to the last unomitted letter before a gap,

- raised letters, medially and finally, often accompanied by some
neighboring omissions,

- special letter combination symbols, e.g., a 9-like symbol for final -us
or, also, for initial co(n)-, cum, etc.

- use of special monogram approaches to writing words associated with
sacred names or terms of special religious significance, e.g., CR or XP
for Christus.

In connection with all of these it was common (but not invariable) to
retain the inflectional endings of inflected forms, e.g., XPo for Christo
or CR for Christi.

Of course, using some of these strategies per se would provide a fairly
obvious handle for decryption, and might well be suppressed, but I suspect
that abbreviation, perhaps unmarked or differently marked, has to be
expected, at least in the underlying text.  This would play a certain
amount of hob with the statistical distribution of letters.  In addition,
some of the standard strategies might, as D'Imperio considers, have been
employed in constructing or inspiring the Voynich script.

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