Syllabic Hypothesis

[Emma May Smith]

A pro of this theory is that it would account for the quite rigid word structure, with Voynich words having a seemingly small inventory of "parts" as well as highly positional elements. This is reasonably similar to what we would see in a phonemic inventory and as the output of phonotactic rules.

However, there are several cons:

• Every word (or most) must contain a vowel, which means that a there will be a single set of glyphs which occurs in most words. This is actually true, but these are the single glyphs [o, y] rather than a set of glyph groups. Moreover, these same glyphs are also those which can appear 1) multiple times in a word, and 2) discontinuously. A syllable cannot have more than one nucleus and the whole nucleus needs to be continuous.
  
• Although glyphs representing vowels could occur at the start, midlde, or end of words, the longer the word then the more likely than the vowel is represented by the middle glyphs (there is a strong restriction on the maximum complexity of consonant clusters in the onset and code). These middle glyphs are exactly where we see the most variety of glyphs in Voynich words, with lower variety to either side. Think of a word such as [qokeedy]: both [qo] and [dy] are common in those positions across
  many words, yet [kee] can be replaced with some higher range of potential glyph groups. Yet phonemic inventories typically have 3 to 5 times more consonants than vowels.
• This is especially true for consonants before vowels rather than after. Languages tend to show a greater range of consonants before a vowel than after, and allow more complexity in that position. This is opposite in the Voynich text where the range of glyphs which can come after gallows (which are likely to be in the middle of syllables) has more variety than those which come before.
  
• Solving this problem by treating gallows as part of the consonant in the onset rather than the vowel would run into the problem in the first point. You would run into words like [qokody], [qokol], [qokor] and many others where the vowel would need to be [o], yet this has to be ruled out.
  

I hope these points are helpful. I'm sorry I don't have a counter-theory to offer. It's clear that the structure of Voynich words is a problem (well, parts of the structure, not all), but I cannot think what might be behind it.