Voynich text generator

[Sam G]

To determine statistical ratios (entropy, random walk etc.) I need some sample text. I could write some sample text on my own. The question is would you trust me if I show you some text  and say this text was generated this or that way.

Probably.

> Well then it seems like text generated earlier should have different properties than that generated by later iterations of this process, right?

This is a well known fact for the VMS. Currier described two languages in 1976 (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).

Reddy and Knight "show the proportion of words in each page that are classified as the B language" in figure 2 (see Figure 2 in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). 

Figure 2 suggests that if you would reorder the pages of the VMS according to the proportion of words in B language  you would indeed reveal the initial order for the pages.

Montemurro and Zanette describe a "network of relationships between the sections" of the VMS (see Figure 4A in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). 

There result suggests that you should reorder the sections in the following order: Herbal in Currier A, Pharmaceutical section, Astronomical section, Cosmological section, Herbal in Currier B, Stars and Biological section.

I can see how that makes sense, especially with Bio having less in common with Herbal A than the Stars section does.  It's not how the pages are presently ordered and, I think, cannot be how they were intended to be ordered (Herbal A must have been first and Stars last), though you could argue that they needn't have been written in that order.

Let me describe it with the most frequent word in currier B as example. This word is 'chedy'.  This word is missing for pages in Currier A. (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)

I think it's funny that you're using <chedy> as an example after I just pointed out its rarity in your sample text, but anyway...

But the last word in f1r.P1.1 is 'sholdy'. (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)

The first step is that the 'l' was removed from 'sholdy' resulting in 'shody' and 'chody'. (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)

The next step is that a 'e' was added in front of 'o'. This step is resulting in 'sheody' and 'cheody'. (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)

The next step is that 'eo' was replaced with 'ee'. This results in 'sheedy' and 'cheedy'.
(see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)

The last step is to replace 'ee' with 'e' which results in 'shedy' and 'chedy'. (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)

Since 'chedy' is the most frequent word in Currier B the bigram 'ed' is typical for Currier B. The reason that 'chedy' did not occur on pages in Currier A is that the scribe did not know that he will later write 'ed' instead of 'od'. This is the reason that the change from 'od' into 'ed' is a good marker to distinguish between Currier A and B pages.

No, the word <chedy> alone cannot account for the distribution of <ed>, if that's what you're saying.  There are many other common words that contain <ed>, such as <okedy>, <okeedy>. <qokedy>, <qokeedy>, etc., as well as rare words that contain <ed>, and these words are also very rare or entirely absent in the A language text.  Also we have <ed> and <od> coexisting in most of the B language text, but <od> only drops out in the Bio section (if I recall correctly).  It's difficult to see how your text copying method could have produced such a distribution unless your scribe was consciously thinking about these particular pairs of letters and deliberately adjusting how often they were used.  Otherwise, as I understand your method, all these words should have been treated independently and we shouldn't see any correlation like this.