24-11-2019, 01:54 PM
(This post was last modified: 24-11-2019, 01:55 PM by nickpelling.)
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.
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.