Re: VMs: labels as null digraphs versus colors, ordinals

[Wayne Durden <wdurden@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Rene:

Digraphs as colors (or other adjective or even a pair of adjectives as in a vedic food type pair)  was a possibility I explored and ultimately found unlikely for the following reasons:

1:  The digraphs appear too densely within the text to be colors used as colors or any adjective used meaningully as an adjective (this does not discount the possibility of them as colors used as code ordinals yet[which is no different than them simply being ordinals] -taken up below). 
2:  Some digraphs appear back to back in the text too frequently for them to be colors or other adjective, my example DGDG or OLOL, and too frequently for this back to back placement to be simple mistake and for DG or OL to be a color or any adjective unless used in the context VERY VERY (for instance DGDG representing very very yellow).
3.  The positional use of a digraph within a word is inconsistent with their uses as color or adjective.  I.e. some digraphs like OR may be word beginning, word final or even standalone.  Others like OT are far more fixed word beginning, although often prefixed with the 4, Q or G character and occasionally not word beginning as on f71r.
4.  Comparing the digraphs across folios strains credulity that every nymph or star and many plants have the same (of relatively few) adjectives.  I.e., every nymph, is the green x nymph(in your green off the cuff example), particulary when the second digraph as in OTAL (the AL) is ALSO used frequently in the plant section labels?  Were you suggesting that the use of OTAL meant green and alive for the plant, and also that the green nymph was also alive?;)

I realize your example that it might be green or alive is not meant literally, but one of the exercises which I did go through with regard to the labels was to try and determine whether any digraph or combination could even be localized to a part of speech like a noun or adjective.  And if you consider usage throughout the manuscript no matter what part of speech is tried i.e. whether a two digraph label is a noun in its entirety, whether it is part adjective and part subject, adjective in its entirety, pair of adjectives, etc. when compared to the full text the options drop away for natural language.  The most sensible application in that line that stood up partially is that a digraph like OT could be a generic subject like a pronoun or some such.  The problem there was on a folio like the ones which are largely line leading stars or flowers where many instance of the 4OT(varied ending) appear back to back is that the ending digraphs like OR, OL appear elsewhere in labels or back to back in body text which subtracts from the probability of their use as object modifiers or adjectives to a 4OT subject.  

It is easy to say in the context of one example submitted only to  show where very few digraphs repeat unusually across subject matter that OT could be "green" for instance.  But that misses the point that other usage in the manuscript suggests that OT can't consistently be "green" or even any adjective if the drawings next to the labels are meaningful and both of a two digraph word is used.  


If the word in that example is in fact the same OTAL across both folios 82v and 101v2, what is any suggestion that applies to both in entirety and which makes sense in context of other AL or OL uses in the body text?  If one can simply say OT is green in the labels without regard to the consequence the suggestion makes as to the way OT is used in multiple label pages and the full text, then there is simply no shortage of tar babies that can be posed to any hypothesis.  What suggestion might be made for OT that is consistent not only on 82v and 101v2, but in the labels on f77r (juxtaposed near vein pipe openings OTCDG?) AND f71r (next to clothed nymphs with stars or flowers in hand)?  Still "green" or "alive"?  My point is that there are simply too few digraphs used in the labels and far too varied label drawings next to them for them to carry part of speech meaning related to the drawings.  

I explored the idea of adjective pairs, (the idea of vedic pair labels perhaps)?  Not likely when the pairs are used next to images of far different subject matter with stars, nymphs and plants?  There is an obvious entropic breakdown of the body text into digraphs, but simply too few digraphs used in the labels and recycled across labels for there to be an alphabetic substitution usage or a part of speech usage. If OT is an adjective as in green and DG (8Y) is an adjective and OL is an adjective [and from my review it seemed OT was far more likely a subject], then what is any suggested reconciliation of the  uses of OTALDG, OTAL, OTLDG  across varied subject folios?  


The idea that the digraphs are either thus nulls or ordinals seems far more likely if one concedes the digraphs arent used in a manner throughout the manuscript where they can even be localized to a part of speech.

The problem I have with digraphs as ordinals, is that if the drawings have any meaning next to the labels as a key to them there is no consistency as in the examples given of like number of elements for the same digraphs.  If the whole labels on a page are simply to represent ordinals in some order they appear, the exact labels don't appear enough in the plain text to offer much encoded content.  Of the possibilities here, it seemed that the most likely was that one of the digraphs of a label might be an ordinal related to its position of appearance on the folio.  This leaves the problem of how one approaches the folios with no labels?  Do they relate to certain label pages to be decoded as I currently suspect? Note however, that if OT is an ordinal such as 1 or 7 based on position in the label folio, it isn't consistent across all label folios.  Furthermore in some label folios a digraph like OT appears multiple times (i.e.f71r or f82) ARGGGH   



More importantly if label digraphs are ordinal keys for the body text, then most of the text of course translates to ordinals.  If each ordinal represented a letter/word etc., then traditional code breaking frequency analysis would apply unless the text is loaded with nulloes to spoil this.  One way or the other, the text must be loaded with nulls....  I suggest only that using the label digraphs to knock out nulls yields results that coincidentally could explain characteristics that statistical surveys identify in the text (i.e. A and B languages and subdialects thereto) too frequent appearance of digraphs back to back in the body text, etc.  It is an easy enough exercise to do for single sets of pages between a label page and body text page, far easier to try in a small group than to argue about it further.

It has been suggested to me that because of the ambiguity as to the plant label page folds, that a collaboration effort might be focused on a nymphs in lake set as there don't appear to be questions of foldover continuations there...

If anyone wants to take a stab at a knockout  of nulls on any particular set, I will be happy to do that set and compare with you off list to see how closely we might agree as to the remaining characters after knockout and whether there is a meaning or enough of any interesting feature to suggest up the results to the full list.  I plan to spend some time doing this anyway so it isn't an imposition.  Just suggest which label page and text page you believe correspond and would like to compare and we can work out whether to do quick and dirty scratchouts and swap, or a more complex key unique color, etc.

Cheers


Wayne





On Monday, April 25, 2005, at 04:16  AM, Rene Zandbergen wrote:
> Hi!
> I'm sorry, but to me this is not very conclusive.
> "ot-" could mean 'green' or 'alive' or it could
> be a type of classifier indicating a noun.
> Or it could be the letter "capital I", for example
> if the plant is Ivy and the nymph Irene.
>
> More interestingly, it could mean 75 and 
> they could all be words listed on page 75 of the
> VMs-to-plaintext dictionary.
>
> I could come up with more...
>
> (Maybe I misunderstood what you were trying
> to do - apologies if so).
>
> Cheers, Rene