The Voynich Ninja

Thomas, the answer is yes, because such language behavior is the core of my research & development.

Soon i will probably open up the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. section on my site which shows a.o. some of my old and middle English research.
The direction of your question would force me to elaborate extensively on my method here, and for that you better read stuff on my site.
I am not trying to sell that, but i just want people to realize that "just comparing words" is only the beginning.

I've now also published the uniqueness of words in the manuscript, divided in sections. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. The behavior seems quite "normal".

As suggested by Davidsch, I have extended the label statistics to include the “Rosettes” page. I used Solfi's transcription for You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and Takahashi's for all the rest.

The percent results do not change with respect to those computed without the Rosettes:

539 total labels (single words with a minimum length of 4)

251 47% labels perfectly matching words
 23  4% labels matching a sequence of words
 38  7% labels also occurring as part of words
 43  8% additional labels found removing spaces
184 34% labels that cannot be found

Using these data, I have computed something along the lines of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., but maybe not as complex.
I made some double checking, but I cannot exclude I made some major error. If anyone thinks that these results are not consistent with what can be observed in the VMS, I would be happy to discuss the subject and make corrections!

I have split the data into sections according to the lists provided here:
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with the difference that I considered the Astrological and Cosmological to form a single section.

Then I have computed a graph describing the distribution with which labels appearing in all the sections appear as words in the other sections (so this is only about the 47% of the labels that perfectly match words).

In the graph, colors correspond to the sections containing the labels, while the bars correspond to the section containing the corresponding words. The bars represent percentage of the labels on each section: for each color, all bars of that color add up to 100%.
The herbal section contains only a handful of labels and the “stars with text” section none. So these two sections don't appear as label “sources”.



Comments:

• Labels re-occur as words rather uniformly in the different sections.
  
• The most prominent difference is that labels from the biological section tend to appear as words in the biological section more than elsewhere. I did not expect a single section to behave so differently from the others. But it must be said that the biological labels reoccurring in the biological section are only 34: the numbers are maybe too small to be statistically reliable. 
  
• Labels from a section seem to have a minimal but consistent preference to re-occur as words in that same section (the exception is the biological section, in which the preference is not minimal, see previous point).
  

Once again, Marco, thank you for your solid work.

The biological labels are indeed an interesting case. Your work inspires me to take a look at the label to text relationship in that section.

When I found the attached correspondence between three of the first labels in Pisces, and three words on f107r, I thought I was really on to something.

[attachment=630]

After further searches, I wondered if it wasn't just a coincidence.
I am still undecided....

(17-09-2016, 03:11 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I wondered if it wasn't just a coincidence.

The eternal problem of all VMS research.

Yes indeed! The eternal problem of VMs research is recognition and elimination of coincidence and the establishment of validity. How is that to be done? If the author can not find a way to do do this. how can s/he expect to communicate?

Let me suggest an example - in a new thread. Triple convergence.

(17-09-2016, 03:11 PM)I wrote Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.When I found the attached correspondence between three of the first labels in Pisces, and three words on f107r, I thought I was really on to something.

After further searches, I wondered if it wasn't just a coincidence.
I am still undecided....

There is actually a lot more behind this.

If one could link each zodiac label to one paragraph in the 'recipes' section, one would make a big step in understanding the MS.
If this link also followed some order, it would be even better.
We don't know exactly what are the start points for each of the circles of zodiac labels, though we can make some reasonable guesses. The order of recipes in the recipes section may also have been rearranged.

To have good evidence for a link between the zodiac labels and the recipes section (and possibly similarly for the pharma labels), one would need to have a high percentage of matches. It doesn't have to be 100% since both sections are incomplete.

The percentage I found seems more than trivial, i.e. more than just chance, and in particlar it is interesting to see that most usually each recipe links to only one label.
The percentage is, however, also too low to be certain, and I didn't find any other sequences (yet) than the three at the start of Pisces.

When doing these types of matches, one develops the feeling that one should be able to do a 'fuzzy' match. Many 'a's and 'o's are not so clear, and similarly with other letters.

What is more, and this is the main point I am wondering about:
it is quite conceivable, that the method used by the (one or more) people writing the text of the MS, allowed for some freedom. This could be the introduction of nulls, the representation of source characters by different code characters or combinations, etc etc.
In that case, the same plain text word may end up in the MS with different representations.

This is one way how the different Currier languages could be explained. Also the gradual transition from A to B that seems to be there.

(18-09-2016, 08:38 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(17-09-2016, 03:11 PM)I wrote Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.When I found the attached correspondence between three of the first labels in Pisces, and three words on f107r, I thought I was really on to something.

After further searches, I wondered if it wasn't just a coincidence.
I am still undecided....

There is actually a lot more behind this.

...
We don't know exactly what are the start points for each of the circles of zodiac labels, though we can make some reasonable guesses. The order of recipes in the recipes section may also have been rearranged.

.
...

Actually, we do.

In most of the wheels in the manuscript, the start point (or what most likely is the start point) is marked, sometimes very clearly.

In most cases it is to the left at about 10:00 o'clock or so. This holds true in the various sections. There aren't many exceptions.

Hello JKP,

for the ordering of the 30 zodiac labels (with the nymphs holding stars) this is indeed what I mean with the reasonable guesses. For the text in the circles, it seems a bit more certain.

...<speechless>...

This is exactly what i am trying to do for several months (last year)
also i find it incredible that Marco did the exact same things I already did and published.


It seems threads are read very badly, or my writing is very bad or I am almost invisible.

I am really disappointed. Good luck you'all with writing stuff.