What are labels?

[Mark Knowles]

No, none of those has to be implied. Just, when you describe a certain plant, you don't name it. Suppose 2v is water lily, and the text is about water lily, but there is no word "water lily" in the folio.

Same for stars. Suppose 68r1 is the star map, but there are no star names (the reader has to know them without labeling). Instead, the labels contain information about (let's say, just for the sake of a possible example) what good or evil spirits are associated with respective stars.

Isn't it very unusual not to name things in manuscripts of that period? Without a name doesn't it make it rather difficult to know which plant/star etc. is being referred to?

When you say good and evil spirits it seems to me that you are swapping one name for another, but I thought you were suggesting that labels are adjectives. If you have names like good and evil spirits instead that it seems to me that you have the same problems to resolve.

I don't think opting for the radical solution of having no names resolves the problem with labels.

I think labels or labelese, as it is sometimes termed, is very important as I view it as Voynichese in its simplest form without the complexities of sentences. The only negative of working with labels is that it reduces the amount of text available to study.