VMs: Strange or not?

[Knox Mix <knoxmix@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Koontz John E wrote:

> These are not the only cases where two EVA letters have been argued to be
> the same on distributional grounds combined with a similarity in
> appearence, e.g., various gallows characters.  However, it would be wise
> to remember that distributional grounds can be used to equate any two
> different letters that happen to occur in the same orthographic contexts,
> or, more or less equivalently, represent different sounds that can occur
> in the same canonical context.  For example, in native English sh and ch
> have rather similar distributions, or many vowels, or r and l, and so on.

John, I am not proposing that ch and sh are the same. EVA-k & EVA-t are 
almost identical in their "preference" for adjacent letters. EVA-f & 
EVA-p are very similar to each other in that respect and similar to k & 
t but, if I remember correctly, are opposite K & t in following EVA-e. I 
am not of the opinion that these better candidates are identities.

> Given any tendency for similarity between different letters, and some
> scripts have strong tendencies in that direction, you can combine
> coincidences of the two to argue for identity.  For example, e, o, and
> a are not the same, even though there are many words in many languages
> that differ only in terms of one of more of these letters.
>
> What controls this sort of distributional argument in standard linguistic
> situations is the information that two forms involving these two letters
> or sounds have different meanings - what is called a minimal pair.
> Naturally the whole concept of minimal pairs fails if the text is
> encyphered in a way that varies the letter used to encode a given clear
> letter.  However, if a scheme like that is in use, I wonder if one would
> expect to find much in the way of repeated words at all, especially if the
> scheme was a strong one.  

I have been waiting for someone to make a case against k/t = r/l (or 
what serves as r/l) that would apply to any language. "Any language" 
covers a lot of territory so I am not sure that is possible. Someone 
(Jason Morningstar?) showed gallows are not nulls. Nick suggests they 
might be stand-ins for other letters -- correct me if I am mistaken. I 
think they are not considered vowels, in part, because of being flanked 
by high frequency letters. VFQ will determine whether that still applies 
if c & h are discounted.

A counter exception here would be that if
> multi-letter sequences are being used as the basic units in the encyphered
> text they might easily reappear, even in different senses, e.g.,
> cheol/sheol might be one letter one time and another another time.
>
> Obviously it is rather difficult to come up with minimal pairs in the case
> of a document of unknown meaning.  One way to attempt to control for this
> lack would be to look at the distribution of apparently interchangeable
> forms.   Looking at sh and ch in larger syntactic contexts is one way.
> For example, in Knox Mix's examples, the only one in which the
> similarities extend beyond the immediate word or word pair is:
>
>
> > 1875       ody ch*k*es otal/sol sheeol  OL CHEEY  os sheky sheol or
> > 1876      sheol or shear oly/lcheol ol  OL SHEEY  olsheey shol keey
>
>                                *********************************
>
> Notice also that ch and sh occur in both examples, so it's not a dialect
> difference, or, at least dialects are freely mixed.
>
> Another comparison that can be made is to determine whether particular
> variants have any particular distribution in the whole text.  I don't know
> the answer on this.

With the test file I am using
CHEDY is found 472 times
SHEDY is found 392 times

The following tabulation is not valid in an absolute sense because, by 
the method used, words preceding the targets (CHEDY & SHEDY) are counted 
as many times as the targets occur in a single line. There should be a 
rough ch-sh word relative comparison. Here again, though, the words in 
question are high frequency in the manuscript so what it might be 
revealing is that there is no connection between ch & sh. Or it might be 
revealing nothing. I am curious as to what other people think about it.

Of all the words on lines containing CHEDY,
CHEDY accounts for 5.89 percent

Of all the words on lines containing SHEDY,
SHEDY accounts for 5.80 percent


CHEDY	472	5.89		SHEDY	392	5.80

words that appear on a line with CHEDY 50 or more times and
words that appear on a line with SHEDY 50 or more times

shedy	163	2.03		chedy	163	2.41
ol	158	1.97		ol	151	2.24
daiin	127	1.58		daiin	89	1.32
qokedy	124	1.55		qokedy	140	2.07
qokeedy	123	1.53		qokeedy	105	1.55
qokaiin	111	1.38		qokaiin	85	1.26
qol	103	1.28		qol	81	1.20
qokeey	96	1.20		qokeey	85	1.26
qokal	94	1.17		qokal	81	1.20
aiin	84	1.05		aiin	63	0.93
chey	81	1.01		chey	65	0.96
qokain	79	0.99		qokain	97	1.44
dar	79	0.99		dar	59	0.87
ar	64	0.80		..	..	..
shey	58	0.72		shey	79	1.17
or	58	0.72		or	59	0.87
al	57	0.71		..	..	..
otedy	54	0.67		..	..	..
dy	53	0.66		dy	58	0.86
..	..	..		dal	58	0.86

> One other strategy that occurs to me is that occurrence of different
> variants in labels of different graphics might suggest different meaning,
> even if the meaning was not known.  In other words, different graphics
> would suggest, but obviously not prove, different meanings.
>
> ======
>
> I was tempted to try to work in some sort of play on Knox Mix and Machts
> Nichts, but decided to settle for admitting that I have been wondering.

There are several explanations; all false.

Regards ......... Knox
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