+- The Voynich Ninja (https://www.voynich.ninja)
+-- Forum: Voynich Research (https://www.voynich.ninja/forum-27.html)
+--- Forum: Analysis of the text (https://www.voynich.ninja/forum-41.html)
+--- Thread: The "gallows" characters (/thread-70.html)
The "gallows" characters - Anton - 24-12-2015
There has been much discussion as to the essence of the "gallows" characters in the VMS. Basically, there are several types of gallows there:
- "plain" gallows - EVA p, f, k and t
- composite "benched" gallows - such as cph and the like - actually we don't know if they represent a single character or a sequence of "plain" characters
- "embellished" gallows - which well may be just actual embellishments of the "plain" gallows
- weird gallows with one leg in one "word" and other leg in another - notably, EVA t exhibits such behaviour.
- They have not so many variations – just four (p, f, k and t).
- They are not rare in the corpus.
- They occur very frequently as the starting character of the paragraph. Sometimes many paragraphs in a row begin with the gallows.
- They seem to never occur in the end of any distinct high-level logical entity (paragraph or label). I was not able to confirm this 100% due to the absence of the respective query in any Voynich tool, but I found no occurrences offhand.
What set of elements could have such properties? It occurred to me that a set of articles is a corresponding match.
E.g. (modern) English has two articles – “a” and “the” (if we add the "an" word form, we will have three), German has five (der, die, das, ein, eine) etc.
Of course, the adoption of this idea would mean that Voynich spaces are not real spaces and that there are real spaces where we don't observe them in the MS.
One objection to this idea refers to short labels including gallows. E.g., consider otol (Voynich "star" in f68r). If t here stands for an article, then it is strange to have only one letter before the article in a given phrase. However, what if o does not stand for a single letter (as t does not, in our assumption)? What if o is a shorthand for some notion (like "star" or "stone")? OK, then we have the sequence <notion X> <article> <notion X> l. Not very promising, unless this is something like "star of the stars..." or "ol" is not the same as "o"+"l".
Well, although this article idea probably does not apply directly, I vaguely suspect that something may be developed out of here.
RE: The "gallows" characters - david - 29-12-2015
RE: The "gallows" characters - Anton - 29-12-2015
RE: The "gallows" characters - david - 29-12-2015
RE: The "gallows" characters - Anton - 29-12-2015
RE: The "gallows" characters - david - 30-12-2015
RE: The "gallows" characters - Anton - 30-12-2015
RE: The "gallows" characters - david - 30-12-2015
RE: The "gallows" characters - Anton - 30-12-2015
RE: The "gallows" characters - david - 30-12-2015