04-09-2017, 05:41 PM
Wonderful work again, Marco.
As you indicate, it seems clear that in literary language (in the languages we are familiar with) we have to count on poetic license to get this many duplications
Now I haven't read through this entire thread which predates my activity as a Voynich researcher, but this phenomenon reminds me of reduplication. This is a grammatical phenomenon in many languages. For example, to form a plural.
Note that in a pre-modern setting, there were few spelling rules, so in theory it doesn't matter whether these words are written as one or two words. For example if [pin] means chair and [pinpin] means chairs, then the spelling of the plural could be "pinpin" or "pin pin" depending on scribal preferences.
The wiki has a huge amount of examples from many language families: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
I'm not saying that it must be one of the languages listed in the wiki of course. I think there is a fair chance that Voynichese is a pidgin, which will almost certainly be undocumented (forgotten to the ages) but is likely to adopt a process like reduplication. In Afrikaans, for example, reduplication is well documented.
It may be interesting to see if we can check a text in one of the listed languages just to get an idea. Too bad nobody on the forum can understand these.
Alternatively of course, the text type (scientific/practical/instructional?) might cause the reduplication in Voynichese. If the contents describe various procedures, you can get reduplication which would lack elegance in a literary text. But I can't think of a good concrete example at the moment. Something like directions for example: "to reach the church, you go left, left and then right". But I'd think that the first option (linguistic process) might be more likely.
As you indicate, it seems clear that in literary language (in the languages we are familiar with) we have to count on poetic license to get this many duplications
Now I haven't read through this entire thread which predates my activity as a Voynich researcher, but this phenomenon reminds me of reduplication. This is a grammatical phenomenon in many languages. For example, to form a plural.
Note that in a pre-modern setting, there were few spelling rules, so in theory it doesn't matter whether these words are written as one or two words. For example if [pin] means chair and [pinpin] means chairs, then the spelling of the plural could be "pinpin" or "pin pin" depending on scribal preferences.
The wiki has a huge amount of examples from many language families: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
I'm not saying that it must be one of the languages listed in the wiki of course. I think there is a fair chance that Voynichese is a pidgin, which will almost certainly be undocumented (forgotten to the ages) but is likely to adopt a process like reduplication. In Afrikaans, for example, reduplication is well documented.
It may be interesting to see if we can check a text in one of the listed languages just to get an idea. Too bad nobody on the forum can understand these.
Alternatively of course, the text type (scientific/practical/instructional?) might cause the reduplication in Voynichese. If the contents describe various procedures, you can get reduplication which would lack elegance in a literary text. But I can't think of a good concrete example at the moment. Something like directions for example: "to reach the church, you go left, left and then right". But I'd think that the first option (linguistic process) might be more likely.
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