Language A vs B crib?

[Emma May Smith]

Yes, I find it extremely interesting and almost certainly relevant to understanding Voynichese.

Is a possibility that [a] is a vowel marker which itself depends in the value of the preceding sound, and hence is not used in the beginning of a piece of text?

I believe it is highly likely that [a] is a vowel, yes*. Though I would lean more toward there being an issue with articulation which causes the introduction of the additional [d]. So, maybe, if the word before ends in a vowel too, then [d] is inserted to ease pronunciation (this happens in English!). The same may go when a word beginning with [a] occurs immediately after a pause, which is plausibly the phonetic environment at the start of a line.

However, I also believe that [o] is a vowel and [d] is not added in a similar way. I cannot pretend that my hypothesis is flawless.



*I've written more about this on my blog, and there's too much to say here.