Re: VMs: evidence against line transposition

[Wayne Durden <wdurden@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> 
> Well... it's the first time I've been named and shamed for excess
> politeness, but I'm happy to take it on the chin. :-)
> 
> First, a couple of quick observations. Voynichese is strongly structured at
> the letter level, which makes many short clusters of letters recur from
> page to page: these alone would make cloud bunnies easy to find. But
> also... in EVA, a/o are visually similar, as are n/r, ch/sh, etc: these too
> add to the distraction, making everything seem a little more regular than
> it actually is.
> 
> So... in your examples, I couldn't help but notice your matching up short
> clusters of letter, as well as your matching a/o and ch/sh. In my opinion,
> any resultant match built on these is more likely to be cloud bunnies than
> a message from a higher intelligence. Even if it is in French. ;-)

Thanks for the replies Nick and Dana.  In fact Nick, this kind of response
is what I was hoping to elicit from perhaps a collection of people.  Thank
you genuinely. 

 I wasn't aware of the SID files about the rationales for the transcription
in some cases.  My personal trust in the transcripts was shaken when I saw
some end of word characters on occasions where it seemed unmistakable that
there was a stroke that made it a "g" looking character as opposed to the
"a" looking character in the transcript.  My thoughts were that no matter
how carefully prepared, the EVA transcript is susceptible to error so be on
the watch or be hesitant to rely on analytical methods that rely upon an
exactitude in it.  The transcript is a derivative afterall and sometimes
when starting it makes sense to go to the images of the original and form an
opinion to what degree you should accept the derivative.  It is of course
useful, but apparently imperfect.

 I realize you and Dana point to the accent related to the difference
between ch/sh.  Someone on the list just the other day I believe expressly
said this was really one character in his opinion.  Others have said
flourishes related to the gallows characters may in fact not be different
characters, but in fact flourishes.  I have been open to either and went
looking to old texts to see how known things have been treated and to assign
some personal acceptance to the ideas.  After looking at many manuscripts,
such as the various versions at the Charrette project, I find that
characters now translated to the same modern alphabet were in fact written
by the same scribe with different flourishes or accents on occasion.  In
other words, to satisfy myself how I should reconcile the possibility that
some of the EVA characters might be unified, I went and looked elsewhere and
based on those efforts I tend to agree with the poster here that suggested
that the accent which lends to the EVA ch character may be simply script
inconsistency or even faded out on occasion.    The SIDS files may in fact
educate me that I have been foolish and "cc" is in fact a different letter,
glyph or sound than "cc" with the accent.  Nonetheless, it appears at this
point that the difference in acceptance of alphabet glyphs may make some see
similarities others cannot, or on the contrary it may make others see
differences that aren't really there.  The SID files may change my personal
weight on p,k,t  ch, sh alphabet, but for the purposes of the reprentation I
posted I allow the possibility that EVA ch/sh may be incorrect.  If you
weight that as not likely, then I understand from the standpoint, you will
see less similarity.

Your short clusters of letters which exhibit strong structure comment is
well taken, but the point I am trying to make is not only the short clusters
of letters, but the relative order of such short clusters when comparing
parts of different folios.  If I randomly choose chunks of the manuscript
and line them up I can't find such similar "short clusters of letters" OR
ones with this apparent order of the short chunks.  If anyone can simply
choose some random chunks across folios and underline a like number of
similarities and relative order of similarities I would likely concede the
point and abandon the effort.  But the ones like this I do find tend to be
paragraph ending on certain kinds of folios.

I recognize and accept Danas version that the fact that they are not exact
and that tenses, pluralities weakens the argument that they might be saying
the same kind of thing.  I tried to make it clear that I do not think they
are exact, but believe the things I am tracking down seem to imply a
structure based on organization of content.  I.e. certain paragraphs of
certain folios might be discussing the plant forms, colors, root
characteristics, etc.  Turn the problem on its head.  If this were plaintext
about something real what kinds of words would we expect to find, what kinds
of structural similarity and then go looking to see if we can find anything
that might be like that.  I guess I was hoping to find someone who has tried
attacking the problem like that and who might have anything to share ...

I will make a larger quantitative display of these kinds of examples I think
I can make accessible via web page over the next week or so and let the
chips fall where they may.  As Dana stated, there has been some interest
afterall. 

As to Dana's question where we might go from here, I was hoping that other
folks might make a look across folios to see if they could identify such
larger section cross folio similarities, and perhaps folks who know better
might be able to inform me that yes, if phrasal similarities of 8 word forms
could be demonstrated across multiple folios of various lengths and line
numbers it would definitively knock out random grill formation or line
transposition theories.   In hindsight, I don't think this is going to
happen, but it does seem there are some like minded folks who are privately
interested



The cloud bunnies versus message from a higher intelligence is a "strawman"
argument Nick, and hence I understand your comment about this being the
first instance of being called out for undue politeness.  :)  half-kidding
here, and by the way I have found your past posts Very interesting and I
think your recent content about it only be currently unreadable fits my
feelings as well. If anything, my thoughts are the very antithesis of a
message from a higher intelligence.  I prefer to imagine it is a real text
by real people that will one day prove to be of boring content.

WLD

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