My thoughts on the VMS

[MarcoP]

I don't necessarily agree that  "the fact that words have repeating prefixes and suffixes really points to the fact that spaces are meaningful." I provided a counter-example in the other thread:

yol ar ar Shaiin seeo Shoesal chetoly qoch qoskeaiin arSheo qochot qosolaiin otchod keesy oeee qochod ...

= Nullo modo dixerunt. Etiam hoc tertium respondete: s...

Key: <y> = N, <ol> = U, <ar> = L, <Sh> or <se> = o, <aiin> = m, <eo> = d, <s> = i, <al> = x, <ch> or <ee> = e, <ot> = r, <qo> = t, <ke> = a, <or> = H, <od> = s

So, in about 15 minutes of effort I can encode a real plaintext (St. Augustine) with contrived spaces, and certain groups (qo) are always in front while others are always in back (aiin)

Thank you Thomas, I think I can follow your example. I see that here you have 9 different suffixes in 16 words. If one splits Latin words at every occurrence of "t", you end up with highly variable endings (since "t" can occur after a number of different sounds). But I understand that this is just an example and that it could be possible to devise a splitting system that generates something more similar to the actual statistics.

1) If you are searching for a natural language for Voynichese and believe the VMS spaces are true, you are almost certainly limited to agglutinative and polysynthetic languages because of the "morphology" of Voynich words (see the <qot> forms). This eliminates most of the languages in Europe.

I see your point. This seems to be consistent with where some linguistic research about the ms is going.