The Voynich Ninja

It is known that Eva-f and Eva-p appear most commonly on top lines of paragraphs, but how many exceptions are there?

Using the capabilities mentioned in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , it was easy to check.

I used my own transcription (version 1c), and removed uncertain spaces. For alternative readings I selected the first.
Any rare characters that look (a bit) like f and p were ignored, but cPh and cFh were included.

Beside normal paragraph text, these characters also appear in labels, and to some extent in text in circles. The whole text was therefore grouped into three categories:

- First lines of paragraphs
- All other lines of paragraphs
- All other text

The entire text has been represented into 5389 text items or 'loci'. Of these, there are:
  723 first lines of paragraphs
3407 other paragraph lines
1259 other types

These loci have different lengths, so the statistics are based on word tokens. I add a screen shot of an Excel file:

[attachment=3725]

The column 'all' gives the count of all word tokens, and the next two the count of tokens including at least one f or one p.
The row 'P-1' gives the first lines of paragraphs and 'P-n' all other lines. The line 'Other' gives all other loci.

Overall, there are about 3 times as many p-words as f-words. Their distribution in the non-paragraph text is rather similar to the overall text of the MS, but for the paragraph text the know behaviour is quite pronounced. The percentage is more than a factor 10 higher.

However, the exceptions are not rare. There are almost 400 occurrences on later lines in paragraphs, which is again something that requires an explanation. These are almost certainly not just mistakes, as if their appearance there would be 'forbidden'.

How this compares between A and B languages is a next step.

Related blogs on this topic:

Brief introduction on glyph patterns that includes notes on the above characters: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Examples of pilcrows and capitula from medieval manuscripts: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Followup on pilcrows, including some numbers: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

I also have an in-depth section on these characters in the paper I've been trying to get finished so I can post it. All that's left is to paste in the illustrations and double-check the links, but that's not a trivial job.

Did you include the ones in the TO maps?

These are included in the group 'Other'.

There was apparently a typo in the table in the opening post, with an almost negligible impact on the result. Anyway, I redid the counts, also for a number of interesting parts of the MS.

First of all:

- All text

- All text marked as A language by Currier

- All text marked as B language by Currier

[attachment=3727]


This shows that almost all properties are virtually the same:
- 19% (one fifth) of all words in the first lines of paragraphs have at least one p.
- there is only 0.5 to 1% of such words in the rest of the paragraph text
- there is a visible difference in the ratio p / f: 3.0 for A language and 3.7 for B.
This last point is caused by the number of words with p. There is no difference in the fraction of words with f.

The same can be done for quires 13 (biological) and 20 (stars / recipes) which are both B language:
[attachment=3728]

The main thing to be observed is that in these two parts the ratio p / f is clearly increased, to over 5 for both.

However, and in summary, the distribution of f and p is remarkably consistent throughout the MS, even in texts that have otherwise quite different properties.

One more thing that can be seen from these statistics is the average number of lines per paragraph. These can be estimated from the nr of word tokens in the first and all other lines. Using the terminology in the tables:

(P-1 + P-n) / P-1

This gives:

All text:   5.2
A lang:    5.9
B lang:    4.9
Q 13:      9.0
Q 20:      3.6

PS: a number of pages have not been assigned an A or B language and these are only included in the 'All text' statistics.

Thanks, Rene, this is a very interesting thread. I too hadn't really considered the possibility that these occurrence percentages might be so consistent across so many sections.

As to what p/f might be: I'm by far not the only person who has wondered where all the numbers are in Voynichese (after all, numbers are the only thing that has been broken in the Codex Seraphinianus), and the p/f positioning bias Philip Neal noted long ago (often 2/3rds of the way along the top line of paragraphs) has always seems to me to indicate something like a title, a rubricated section, a crypto keyword, or a reference number.

Hence I have long wondered whether the top-line appearances of p and f might possibly be artifacts of a numbering system where the numbers being written are systematically biased towards low numbers in some way. Specifically, I've wondered whether EVA p might be representing Roman number V and EVA f Roman number X. There, p/V would appear in the same place on the page as f/X but (with a suitable bias towards low numbers) where p/V would appear consistently more often than f/X. Note that IIII and IV were both used widely for 4, so we probably can't presume one over the other.

I'm guessing it may be possible to test this p/V f/X hypothesis using the short paragraphs of Q20 (particularly if codicological reasoning can help us work out a given bifolio's neighbouring bifolio/bifolia), to see if any kind of occurrence pattern to its p and f usage pops out. But it's not something I've yet tried to do. I may well pick some Q20 pages and collect some p/f usage patterns, see if anything drops out.

Well, I've put my particular page on P and F under password protection about a year ago, because when I discovered new things,
people here on the forum simply copied my results and posted it here and elsewhere, as if they discovered it themselves. I hated that.
The hours that I spent in the research and analysis should at least have been enough, to earn a little respect. 

The only people that are always cited are Mary D'imperio, Philip Neal and Curier. 
I do not know why always these old researchers get more respect than younger guys like me. 
Just kidding, the quality of their publications is of course not comparable, but nevertheless a little bit of citing would not hurt.

The results you Rene, post here are interesting here, but there is much more, that has never been published (except as noted).
You could take the lines that are marked as "paragraph only" and do the same and compare the results with "all lines".
Furthermore, I do not know if your transcription differentiates between P with leftcurl and without?

(25-11-2019, 12:36 PM)Davidsch Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Well, I've put my particular page on P and F under password protection about a year ago, because when I discovered new things,
people here on the forum simply copied my results and posted it here and elsewhere, as if they discovered it themselves. I hated that.
The hours that I spent in the research and analysis should at least have been enough, to earn a little respect. 
...

I didn't even know you had an article on P and F.

Nick wrote a blog not long ago about the option of posting on some of the academic sites (not the journals, but some of the alternatives). Maybe you should consider posting some of your work on those. You would have a better chance of being cited and of your work being recognized since it reaches a wider audience.

You could always put a link on the forum on the Articles thread or News thread so that people know it's been posted.

(25-11-2019, 12:36 PM)Davidsch Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Well, I've put my particular page on P and F under password protection about a year ago, because when I discovered new things,people here on the forum simply copied my results and posted it here and elsewhere, as if they discovered it themselves. I hated that.

I'm afraid that I think that comment is rather insulting and out of order. I certainly can't think who you are referring to.

I'd also point out that if you want to be a cited authority, not publishing and sharing your research is probably the wrong route to take!

(26-11-2019, 04:02 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(25-11-2019, 12:36 PM)Davidsch Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Well, I've put my particular page on P and F under password protection about a year ago, because when I discovered new things,
people here on the forum simply copied my results and posted it here and elsewhere, as if they discovered it themselves. I hated that.
The hours that I spent in the research and analysis should at least have been enough, to earn a little respect. 
...

I didn't even know you had an article on P and F.

Nick wrote a blog not long ago about the option of posting on some of the academic sites (not the journals, but some of the alternatives). Maybe you should consider posting some of your work on those. You would have a better chance of being cited and of your work being recognized since it reaches a wider audience.

You could always put a link on the forum on the Articles thread or News thread so that people know it's been posted.

Agreed, I'm a big fan of your blog Davidsch, and I'd love to hear what you have to say about the [p] and [f] problem. I'm trying to pick up where @geoffreycaveny left off on this, because I think he was on the right track, but I'd like to hear some other perspectives. I would gladly cite you as a reference if you shared your article with me.

Consider posting not only a copyright notice, but also a copy-pastable citation for your blog in several formats (Chicago and MLA, maybe), and let visitors know you're happy to share your ideas, and giving credit is as easy as copying this to your clipboard.