04-02-2016, 11:56 AM
Quite a bit of the discussion on this topic centers on whether word repetition reduces information content, means we aren't dealing with a natural language, blah blah blah, etc. etc. etc. Those last two weren't comments on the nature of the discourse here, but examples of natural language English that repeats, carries meaning beyond what the phonemes do alone and isn't used in the kind of formal manuscript some people seem to be assuming VMS represents. There is no reason to assume VMS is anything comparable to a document being prepared for publication. It could just as easily be lab notes, a spell book, someone's homework or some other type of practice text -- all of which you'd expect to find repetition in.
I think it's a safe assumption that whoever wrote it wanted to be able to get as much information out of it when he or she read it as there was put into it when it was written. That's really just a definition of writing, but that's what we're working with here.
Also safe, but not as safe, is the assumption that some of what is written represents nouns. We can express things with repetition of nouns that are culturally significant in English. (Emphasis and disgust: crap, crap, crap, crap, crap or abstract references: Six Six Six or urgent demands: More More More) As we add more parts of speech and grammar repetition still has roles to play, but our assumptions become reasonable rather than safe. Or possibly reasonably safe.
When we start getting into syntax and semantics, given that we aren't even that sure of the character set, our assumptions are recognizably assumptions and eventually we're going to be asked to provide a basis for them. So basing them on preconceptions or the fact that lots of other people make the same assumptions might not be the best starting point. We should at least try to have more than one set of assumptions so we have a fallback position.
The herbal section, recipes section, astronomy section, and so on are useful ways of organizing the manuscript for discussion, but they are all distinctions made on pictures rather than any analysis of the text. So when we start trying to guess which words we will find where in the text based on something like word frequency, things get crazy. I don't actually believe in reasonably crazy, so I can't qualify this one.
But that's another thread; where I'm going with this one is that on most of the levels of looking at VMS, I don't see word repetition or character repetition as a problem; especially if there isn't more of it than we see in English, Latin or whatever languages we want to translate Voynichese into. Maybe rather than considering if we have too much repetition we should consider where natural languages allow and/or require it.
I think it's a safe assumption that whoever wrote it wanted to be able to get as much information out of it when he or she read it as there was put into it when it was written. That's really just a definition of writing, but that's what we're working with here.
Also safe, but not as safe, is the assumption that some of what is written represents nouns. We can express things with repetition of nouns that are culturally significant in English. (Emphasis and disgust: crap, crap, crap, crap, crap or abstract references: Six Six Six or urgent demands: More More More) As we add more parts of speech and grammar repetition still has roles to play, but our assumptions become reasonable rather than safe. Or possibly reasonably safe.
When we start getting into syntax and semantics, given that we aren't even that sure of the character set, our assumptions are recognizably assumptions and eventually we're going to be asked to provide a basis for them. So basing them on preconceptions or the fact that lots of other people make the same assumptions might not be the best starting point. We should at least try to have more than one set of assumptions so we have a fallback position.
The herbal section, recipes section, astronomy section, and so on are useful ways of organizing the manuscript for discussion, but they are all distinctions made on pictures rather than any analysis of the text. So when we start trying to guess which words we will find where in the text based on something like word frequency, things get crazy. I don't actually believe in reasonably crazy, so I can't qualify this one.
But that's another thread; where I'm going with this one is that on most of the levels of looking at VMS, I don't see word repetition or character repetition as a problem; especially if there isn't more of it than we see in English, Latin or whatever languages we want to translate Voynichese into. Maybe rather than considering if we have too much repetition we should consider where natural languages allow and/or require it.