Discussion of "A possible generating algorithm of the Voynich manuscript"

[Torsten]

There is nothing arbitrary about the appearance of similar words. The term 'similar' in this context is misleading, because the glyphs can be called similar because they appear in similar contexts.

The changes are not as simple as you suggest and they are for sure not arbitrary. For instance we write that "the shape of a glyph must be compatible with the shape of the previous one and is also influenced by its position within a word or a line" (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). This also implies that the changes are context dependent (see also You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).

The summary remains that there is no doubt that similar words appear near each other, or on the same page, but there is no evidence that suggests that this is the result of an intentional process to copy words from previous words while making arbitrary changes.

This is the evidence we present in our paper: The self-citation method "is executable without additional tools even by a medieval scribe and reproduce the statistical key properties of the Voynich manuscript; in particular, both of Zipf’s laws are fulfilled" (see Timm & Schinner 2020, p. 1). This happens since the self-citation method is a recursive process. As a result of a recursive process also long-range correlations are expected. The self-citation method is not only able to reproduce the statistical key properties of the Voynich manuscript but also to explain the long-range correlations that have been uncovered and discussed by several researchers throughout the last decade (see Timm & Schinner 2020, p. 6).

One of the counter arguments against my paper from 2014 was that as a result of the self-citation method each word should be similar to at least one other word. The network of similar words demonstrates that this is indeed the case (see Timm & Schinner 2020, p. 6). With other words the existence of the network of similar words was predicted by the self-citation method. This outcome also illustrates that well reasoned criticism can be helpful to validate and to improve a theory.

The hypothesis says that every word is created by taking and earlier word, making a small change to it (or no change) and then write that word down.

The hypotheses says "replacing one or more glyphs with similar ones" (Timm & Schinner 2020, p. 9). There is nothing said about small changes.

I have already rejected your 'small changes' argument 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..

This is not tested in any of the papers I have seen.

See section You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. "Graphs for individual pages" on "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.".  There you will find the network graph for folio You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and the gephi project for You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. It is possible to use gephi to filter the core network and all word types connected to each other. 

The core network with ED=1 for page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. contains 133 out of 284 words (=47 %). They represent 205 token out of 367 tokens (=56 %).
187 out of 284 word types are connected (ED=1) to at least one other word type (=66 %). They represent 269 token out of 367 tokens (=73 %).

There are also numerous words, even further down the page, that do not look like any previous word.
There are 22 words with an L distance of 4 or more.
Line 27 has  Sheetchy
Line 33 has  ShocTHhy
Line 37 has  chkaiinolfcham    (L distance 8)

This words doesn't exist on folio f58r. You probably mean [sheeetchy], [schocthhy] and the sequence [chkaiin olfcham] (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).

[sheeetchy] and [schocthhy] occur only once in the VMS. There exist a few similar words on folio f58r. The source word for [schocthhy] is probably [sheeetchy] and the source word for [sheeetchy] is probably [cheekey] in line 25. The words probably go back to word [shopchy] in line 1 (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).

Line 1    [shopchy]
Line 10  [chepchey]   sh->ch, o->e, ch->che                                  ED=3
Line 25  [cheekey]     che->chee, p->k, che->e                              ED=3
Line 27  [sheeetchy]  ch->sh, ee->eee, e->ch                                ED=3
Line 32a  [schocthhy] prefix [s] added, sh->ch, e->o, etchy->cthhy  ED=4

The source word for [chkaiin] is probably a word like [skain] or [chaiin]. The word [olfcham] probably combines two source words like [ol] and [chal] or [ol] and [cham] by using rule 3 "Combine two source words to create a new word" (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).

Your example demonstrates that changing more than two glyphs is not uncommon and that it would be a mistake to expect only 'small changes'.