[Article] [Article]: New article by Layfield & Davis

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Here's my chart showing bifolia, quires, scribes, and sections. This will be published in our forthcoming book, but since that's still a year away from being published, I'm happy to share the diagram here. Those of you who are interested in following up on our findings may find it useful.

Thank you!  

But you have the missing folios 91,92 and 97,98 as two separate singulion quires (16 and 18) bracketing quire 17.  Why have you chosen that arrangement, rather than having 91+98 and 92+97 as the two outer bifolios of quire 17?

Because of the "17us" on f96v?  But could it be that those two bifolios were lost after the folio numbers were written, but before the quire numbers were written?  And whoever wrote the quire numbers misinterpreted the missing folio numbers as two missing singulion quires, rather than two missing bifolios of quire 17?

All the best, --stolfi

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Here is the usage of  m (m) in some of first pages, coming from voynichese.com website: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.  Can you see these clusters? They are from 3r, 3v, 6r, 6v pages. And you know what? They all make a single bifolio 

How would you explain it if you claim that Voynichese is a natural text?

It is proposed that m is an abbreviation for iin (and maybe other endings), that the Scribe used when he was short of space (or feeling lazy).

On those four pages, after drawing the plant, he looked at the amount of text he had to write, how much space was left on the page, and decided that he had better abbreviate as much as he could -- lest he would run out of space.  Whereas on most other pages he happened to have plenty of space left for the text.  It so happen that the plants on those four pages are bigger and leave little room on the right side.

Now, how would you explain those excess ms, assuming that the text is gibberish?  Do you claim that it is a consequence of self-copying?  That is, the Scribe wrote an m word per chance at the top of the first page, and then replicated it many times?  

If that is your claim, can you point out where exactly the Scribe stopped copying sequentially to reset the "source pointer", where he restarted the copying from, and which words he mutated during the copying?

All the best, --stolfi

[Grove]

Did anyone use hyphenated text during this time? Just curious if it was a way of splitting a word.

[tavie]

Did anyone use hyphenated text during this time? Just curious if it was a way of splitting a word.

One thing worth noting is that while final m is severely underrepresented at paragraph ends (where we wouldn't expect hyphenation) compared to line ends (where we might), it does still occur at paragraph ends.

[dashstofsk]

sustaining such strict unnatural structural rules over hundreds of pages implies a deliberate, conscious generation system or algorithm, rather than just an intuitive, passive reflex.

And this is what the writer did. The writer had to do more than just generate meaningless text. He also had to give it the appearance of being genuine work, perhaps being from some distant land where they used a strange alphabet. To achieve this he had to be careful to give it definite structure. Otherwise random meaninglessness would have been quickly dismissed as a fraud. Whatever method he used he was successful. Good enough to fool people in the 15th century. But today with the assistance of programmable computers we can see clues in the text, odd mistakes, inconsistencies, evidence for artificiality, that show us something of the way it was done.

[LisaFaginDavis]

Here's my chart showing bifolia, quires, scribes, and sections. This will be published in our forthcoming book, but since that's still a year away from being published, I'm happy to share the diagram here. Those of you who are interested in following up on our findings may find it useful.

Thank you!  

But you have the missing folios 91,92 and 97,98 as two separate singulion quires (16 and 18) bracketing quire 17.  Why have you chosen that arrangement, rather than having 91+98 and 92+97 as the two outer bifolios of quire 17?

Because of the "17us" on f96v?  But could it be that those two bifolios were lost after the folio numbers were written, but before the quire numbers were written?  And whoever wrote the quire numbers misinterpreted the missing folio numbers as two missing singulion quires, rather than two missing bifolios of quire 17?

All the best, --stolfi

The folio numbers were written several hundred years later than the quire numbers. Since the quire numbers were written first, the missing leaves must have been singulion bifolios.

[Torsten]

Also 8r, 8v, 17r, 17v, 22r-24v... This pattern of abundance of m on consecutive pages but NOT on facing pages contradicts Torsten's "with inside facing pages most similar because they were visible together".

nablator, your examples actually confirm bifolium-level production rather than contradicting it. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. belong to bifolium f1/f8 — and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. also contain ⟨m⟩. All four pages of that bifolium have EVA-m. Similarly, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. belong to bifolium f17/f24 — and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. also contain ⟨m⟩. The bifolium f20/f21 on the other hand has zero ⟨m⟩ on any of its four pages.

By "inside facing pages" I mean the Inner Verso and Inner Recto of the same bifolium — for example You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and f24r, which face each other when the sheet is opened flat. These are not consecutive pages in the bound quire but they are on the same physical sheet.

[Jorge_Stolfi]

The folio numbers were written several hundred years later than the quire numbers. Since the quire numbers were written first, the missing leaves must have been singulion bifolios.

Were the folio numbers written before or after the book was bound?  How can we tell?

All the best, --stolfi

[LisaFaginDavis]

The folio numbers were written in the 17th century. I know this by their style. They were added much much later, long after the book was bound.

[ololololo]

Here is the usage of  m (m) in some of first pages, coming from voynichese.com website: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.  Can you see these clusters? They are from 3r, 3v, 6r, 6v pages. And you know what? They all make a single bifolio 

How would you explain it if you claim that Voynichese is a natural text?

It is proposed that m is an abbreviation for iin (and maybe other endings), that the Scribe used when he was short of space (or feeling lazy).

On those four pages, after drawing the plant, he looked at the amount of text he had to write, how much space was left on the page, and decided that he had better abbreviate as much as he could -- lest he would run out of space.  Whereas on most other pages he happened to have plenty of space left for the text.  It so happen that the plants on those four pages are bigger and leave little room on the right side.

Now, how would you explain those excess ms, assuming that the text is gibberish?  Do you claim that it is a consequence of self-copying?  That is, the Scribe wrote an m word per chance at the top of the first page, and then replicated it many times?  

If that is your claim, can you point out where exactly the Scribe stopped copying sequentially to reset the "source pointer", where he restarted the copying from, and which words he mutated during the copying?

All the best, --stolfi

In my opinion, the idea that m is an abbreviation for iin does not contradict the mystification. Perhaps the author didn't care what kind of "sticks" he wrote. He may have done it because he was parodying Latin abbreviations.
So he had a lot of room for imagination, and he could come up with any abbreviations or symbols he wanted...