08-08-2024, 05:53 PM
Hi Tavie,
this is an great article. I would suggest that you publish your results in a peer reviewed journal like Cryptologia.
There is some related research that comes to my mind.
The first mention of line effects is the paragraph about "The Line Is a Functional Entity" in the paper of Prescott H. Currier from 1976. Currier points out: "The first point is that the line is a functional entity in the manuscript on all those pages where the text is presented linearly. There are three things about the lines that make me believe the line itself is a functional unit. The frequency counts of the beginnings and endings of lines are markedly different from the counts of the same characters internally." [You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.].
There is also the paper of Andreas Schinner from 2007. Schinner points to long range correlations within the Voynich text: "Interpreting normal texts as bit sequences yields deviations of little significance from a true (uncorrelated) random walk. For the VMS, this only holds on a small scale of approximately the average line length; beyond positive correlation build up: the presence/absence of a symbol appears to increase/decrease the tendency towards another occurrence" [You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., p. 105]. In my eyes this results demonstrate statistically what you call an "Vertical Impact Effect".
There is also an interesting analysis of Elmar Vogt from 2012. Vogt demonstrates that: "1. The first word with i = 1 of a line is longer than average, ?1 > ?, 2. The second word with i = 2 is shorter, ? 2 < ?" [You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.: p. 4]. In fact, the second glyph group is shorter than the first group in 48% of the lines and longer in only 32%. In my eyes this research also indicates that the first word plays a special role.
I have researched this effect back in 2014: Starting point of my research of the VMS was the idea that it was necessary to find a way to limit the number of words to look at. My idea was to check only words occurring exactly 7 or 8 times in the VMS (see Timm 2014, p. 13). This way it was possible to check each word in detail. At the same time there is no reason to believe that this words behave differently than any other words. One word that exists only 8 times in the VMS is the word 'dsheey' (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) and one word with seven occurrences is the word 'dalam' (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). What surprises me was that 'dsheey' exists in seven out of eight instances at the start of a line and 'dalam' exists in six out of seven cases at the end of a line! I found it stunning that even for rarely used words such striking patterns exists. This was in fact the first pattern I was able to spot in the text. This pattern convinced me that it is possible to describe patterns for the Voynich text. In my eyes there are not only line end glyphs like EVA-m but also line start glyphs like EVA-y, EVA-o, EVA-d and EVA-s (see the tables IX., X. and XI on p. 85 in Timm 2014).
These line start patterns then lead to further patterns. For instance the second glyph group in a line occurs twice as often as a subgroup of the first group (2.6%) than this is the case for any other groups in a given line (1.3%) (see p.20 in Timm 2014). My conclusion for this finding was "Since EVA-y, EVA-i, EVA-d or EVA-s were added frequently to the first glyph group within a line and since the gallow glyphs k, t, p, and f were added regularly to the initial glyph group within a paragraph the average length of the first words within a line increases." [You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., p. 19].
I have three ideas regarding paragraph and line initial glyphs.
My first idea was that the paragraph initial gallow glyph had some influence on the text. For instance the words in the first line of a paragraph contain more gallow glyphs and are on average longer (see Timm 2014 p. 29). One idea might be that the initial gallow glyph also had some influence on line initial glyphs.
My second idea was that paragraph and line initial glyphs are used on purpose to avoid to much repetition on this places. If the author had the impression that he repeats sequences too often he could start a new paragraph. So maybe the the author was using features like paragraph and line initial glyphs to introduce new features into the text and to generate this way some unique words. In this case these observations are "an unintended side effect of the self citation method used to generate the text. The source for the first word in each line could only be found within the previous lines. Since the first and the last word in each line are easy to spot, the most obvious way is to pick them as a source for the generation of a group at the beginning or at the end of a line." [Timm 2014, p. 20].
However if the first or the last words are used frequently as source words for generating new words in the same position this could lead to easy to spot repeated features. Therefore the introduction of some line initial glyphs could be useful to overcome this problem.
"For the second glyph group it is also possible to select the first group as a source. Since the first group in a line usually has a prefix (see o and 9 underlined in red in figure 8) the simplest change is to remove this prefix. And it is indeed possible to find examples of such changes. For instance for the first paragraph on page <f3r> there are two occurrences in which the leading 9 ("y") is also removed for the second glyph group:" [Timm 2014, p. 19]. Moreover it is even possible to demonstrate that the "the second glyph group in a line occurs twice as often as a subgroup of the first group (2.6%) than this is the case for any other groups in a given line (1.3%)" [Timm 2014, p. 20].
My third idea for the usage of paragraph and line initial glyphs was that maybe it was some kind of aesthetic preference of the author of the VMS, like the scribe also prefers EVA-y in word initial and word final position. Or the way the scribe highlighted every second star on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and on the following folios.
this is an great article. I would suggest that you publish your results in a peer reviewed journal like Cryptologia.
There is some related research that comes to my mind.
The first mention of line effects is the paragraph about "The Line Is a Functional Entity" in the paper of Prescott H. Currier from 1976. Currier points out: "The first point is that the line is a functional entity in the manuscript on all those pages where the text is presented linearly. There are three things about the lines that make me believe the line itself is a functional unit. The frequency counts of the beginnings and endings of lines are markedly different from the counts of the same characters internally." [You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.].
There is also the paper of Andreas Schinner from 2007. Schinner points to long range correlations within the Voynich text: "Interpreting normal texts as bit sequences yields deviations of little significance from a true (uncorrelated) random walk. For the VMS, this only holds on a small scale of approximately the average line length; beyond positive correlation build up: the presence/absence of a symbol appears to increase/decrease the tendency towards another occurrence" [You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., p. 105]. In my eyes this results demonstrate statistically what you call an "Vertical Impact Effect".
There is also an interesting analysis of Elmar Vogt from 2012. Vogt demonstrates that: "1. The first word with i = 1 of a line is longer than average, ?1 > ?, 2. The second word with i = 2 is shorter, ? 2 < ?" [You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.: p. 4]. In fact, the second glyph group is shorter than the first group in 48% of the lines and longer in only 32%. In my eyes this research also indicates that the first word plays a special role.
I have researched this effect back in 2014: Starting point of my research of the VMS was the idea that it was necessary to find a way to limit the number of words to look at. My idea was to check only words occurring exactly 7 or 8 times in the VMS (see Timm 2014, p. 13). This way it was possible to check each word in detail. At the same time there is no reason to believe that this words behave differently than any other words. One word that exists only 8 times in the VMS is the word 'dsheey' (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) and one word with seven occurrences is the word 'dalam' (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). What surprises me was that 'dsheey' exists in seven out of eight instances at the start of a line and 'dalam' exists in six out of seven cases at the end of a line! I found it stunning that even for rarely used words such striking patterns exists. This was in fact the first pattern I was able to spot in the text. This pattern convinced me that it is possible to describe patterns for the Voynich text. In my eyes there are not only line end glyphs like EVA-m but also line start glyphs like EVA-y, EVA-o, EVA-d and EVA-s (see the tables IX., X. and XI on p. 85 in Timm 2014).
These line start patterns then lead to further patterns. For instance the second glyph group in a line occurs twice as often as a subgroup of the first group (2.6%) than this is the case for any other groups in a given line (1.3%) (see p.20 in Timm 2014). My conclusion for this finding was "Since EVA-y, EVA-i, EVA-d or EVA-s were added frequently to the first glyph group within a line and since the gallow glyphs k, t, p, and f were added regularly to the initial glyph group within a paragraph the average length of the first words within a line increases." [You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., p. 19].
I have three ideas regarding paragraph and line initial glyphs.
My first idea was that the paragraph initial gallow glyph had some influence on the text. For instance the words in the first line of a paragraph contain more gallow glyphs and are on average longer (see Timm 2014 p. 29). One idea might be that the initial gallow glyph also had some influence on line initial glyphs.
My second idea was that paragraph and line initial glyphs are used on purpose to avoid to much repetition on this places. If the author had the impression that he repeats sequences too often he could start a new paragraph. So maybe the the author was using features like paragraph and line initial glyphs to introduce new features into the text and to generate this way some unique words. In this case these observations are "an unintended side effect of the self citation method used to generate the text. The source for the first word in each line could only be found within the previous lines. Since the first and the last word in each line are easy to spot, the most obvious way is to pick them as a source for the generation of a group at the beginning or at the end of a line." [Timm 2014, p. 20].
However if the first or the last words are used frequently as source words for generating new words in the same position this could lead to easy to spot repeated features. Therefore the introduction of some line initial glyphs could be useful to overcome this problem.
"For the second glyph group it is also possible to select the first group as a source. Since the first group in a line usually has a prefix (see o and 9 underlined in red in figure 8) the simplest change is to remove this prefix. And it is indeed possible to find examples of such changes. For instance for the first paragraph on page <f3r> there are two occurrences in which the leading 9 ("y") is also removed for the second glyph group:" [Timm 2014, p. 19]. Moreover it is even possible to demonstrate that the "the second glyph group in a line occurs twice as often as a subgroup of the first group (2.6%) than this is the case for any other groups in a given line (1.3%)" [Timm 2014, p. 20].
My third idea for the usage of paragraph and line initial glyphs was that maybe it was some kind of aesthetic preference of the author of the VMS, like the scribe also prefers EVA-y in word initial and word final position. Or the way the scribe highlighted every second star on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and on the following folios.
![[+]](https://www.voynich.ninja/images/collapse_collapsed.png)