Syllabic Hypothesis

[pfeaster]

I've been long attracted to the same idea, and I haven't yet given up on it.

This resulted in an informal 'paper' which is at academia.edu, and which I believe I have also summarised here.

This looks like it must be the paper you're describing:

https://www.academia.edu/51151093/NOT_the_solution_to_the_Voynich_MS

I wasn't able to find a summary here, but your posts in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. look as though they might involve similar experiments.

In your experimental example, you've broken the text into syllables that always end with a vowel.  That's different from what I was suggesting, but it might be more consistent with vord morphology, particularly in light of Emma's remarks.

In a scheme like this, it seems to me that L, M, N, and R would likely have been handled as a continuation of a vowel segment -- AL, AM, AN, AR, etc. -- rather than attached to a following consonant.  These (and/or the second vowels in diphthongs) might be good candidates for the slot in vord morphology which Emma used to call a "tail."

If we break up the same text you used with that modification to the rules, we get something like this, where = marks an extension of a vowel segment and + marks a clustering of consonants:

NE=L ME Z+ZO DE=L CA=M MI=N DI NO S+T+RA VI TA
MI RI T+RO VA=I PE=R=U NA SE=L VA=O S+CU RA
CHE LA DI RI T+TA VI=A=E RA S+MA=R RI TA
A HI QuA=N TO=A DI=R QuA=L=E RA=E CO SA DU RA
E S+TA SE=L VA SE=L VA G+GI=A=E=A S+P+RA=E FO=R TE
CHE NE=L PE=N SI=E=R RI=N=O VA LA PA=U R=A
TA=N TE=A MA RA CHE PO CO=E PI=U MO=R TE
MA PE=R T+RA T+TA=R DE=L BE=N CHI VI T+RO VA=I
DI RO DE LA=L T+RE CO SE CHI V+HO S+CO=R TE
I=O NO=N SO BE=N RI DI=R CO MI VI=N T+RA=I
TA=N TE RA PI=E=N DI SO=N NO=A QuE=L PU=N TO
CHE LA VE RA CE VI=A=A B+BA=N DO NA=I
MA PO=I CHI FU=I=A=L PI=E DU=N CO=L LE GI U=N TO
LA DO VE TE=R MI NA VA QuE=L LA VA=L LE
CHE MA VE=A DI PA=U RA I=L CO=R CO=M PU=N TO

The distribution of doubled consonants T+T, Z+Z, G+G, B+B, mirrors that of initial benched gallows in Voynichese -- found only in mid-line, never line-start.

There are a number of cases in which we'd have multiple options for encoding the same plaintext string, e.g.,

MA RA  --  R as onset consonant
MA=R A  --  R attached to preceding vowel
MA=R=A  --  R attached to preceding vowel, and the following A treated as a further continuation of the vowel segment

Whether these options would be enough to make identical repetitions of longer sequences of vords unlikely, I'm not sure.

The only place we find stray single vowels in this example is at the beginning of lines.  There might be an impulse to connect these to the syllables that next follow, giving us some distinctively structured line-start words:

A=HI QuA=N TO=A DI=R QuA=L=E RA=E CO SA DU RA
E=S+TA SE=L VA SE=L VA G+GI=A=E=A S+P+RA=E FO=R TE

Within a line, vowel segments might sometimes grow awkwardly long.

CHE LA VE RA CE VI=A=A B+BA=N DO NA=I
MA PO=I CHI FU=I=A=L PI=E DU=N CO=L LE GI U=N TO

In these cases, there might be an impulse to break them up and connect the later pieces to the following syllable:

CHE LA VE RA CE VI=A A=B+BA=N DO NA=I
MA PO=I CHI FU=I A=L=PI=E DU=N CO=L LE GI U=N TO

Or the parts might end up  s p r e a d   o u t.

   

Just a few other ways I could see an arrangement like this fitting some of the peculiarities of Voynichese, in addition to the vord structure / entropy issue.