The gibberish thread

[Koen G]

My point is not that it's easy :p It's more of a philosophical consideration about the state we are in now with the VM. 
Statistics will only give us indications for one way or the other, but we'll only be able to prove anything when we crack it. Proving it to be nonsensical is impossible. Especially since, despite everything, it is so very language like.

Torsten: many of those questions could be answered hypothetically within a linguistic framework. For example:

• Why does the text evolve over time?  This could be because of the different people involved. Or a gradual a change in approach as the encryption/transcription method matured. Or adaptation to changes in the source material. Or many other things.
  
• Why did even rare features repeat in horizontal or vertical directions (see for instance 'shek', 'sheek' and 'shek' on page f103r)?  Specialized vocabulary in a reduplicating language, for example.
  
• Why 'k' is rarely used in line initial position ('k' is used 129 out of 10934 times or 1% in line initial position, 't' 6%, 'p' 24 %, 'f' 8%)?  When [k] appears line-initially it may be expressed in another way (i.e. position sensitive spelling variation).
  
• Why are 'chol', 'chor', 'shol' and 'chor' more frequent then 'chal', 'char', 'shar' and 'shal'? This could be so many things. These words appear somewhat similar. Maybe one vowel was simply more frequent in such words than the other. Or maybe it's variation in the transcription system. Arabic "a" can often be transcribed as "a" or "e". A scribe can use both but favor one over the other.
  
• Why a word starting with 'q' comes in 65 % of the cases after a word ending with 'y'? This is something to ask Emma, but in short, it could be phonetically determined. Like a linking sound, or a sound changing under the influence of the other. Or it could have something to do with false spaces, if you want to go that way.
  
• Why is the letter after 'q' in 97,5 % of the cases a letter 'o'? Could be similar to q and u in English.
  

These are just some things off the top of my head. Natural language is so rich and unpredictable, and even more so when people start putting it to paper without spelling standards.