Voynichese Phonotactics

[Emma May Smith]

This is the first time I've heard the third proposal regarding y. I am quite happy that ch and sh can be in both consonant and vowel positions. But y strikes me as not having the same qualities. Can it explain why y appears less commonly in the middle of words, and never before certain characters? I do believe that any theory concerning y has to account for its relationship with a.

I agree that y seems to be functioning primarily as a vowel or syllable nucleus.  But it's not clear what role it's playing when it follows a sequence of e's. E.g. ey, eey, etc.  Admittedly a vowel sound might not be inappropriate here either.  But I also think that y also seems to be a kind of counterpart to l, which seems to be primarily a consonant.

Why can ey and eey not be functionally equivalent to eo and eeo?

To a broader point concerning the phonology of Voynichese: if we believe ch and sh are sometimes acting as syllabic consonants we can potentially narrow down their value. Syllabic consonants are typically sonorants, so sounds like /n, m, r, l/. (I know which of those I would put my money on.)

If you're thinking that ch and Sh might represent /n/ and /m/ (not sure which would be which), then this is also a possibility that I have considered.

I was actually thinking the opposite! Typically, if a language allows a consonant to be syllabic, it should allow all consonants of higher sonority to be syllabic. Liquids are more sonorant than nasals, thus if ch and sh are nasals, then we would expect that whatever represent /r, l/ to be syllabic too. Moreover, ch and sh are often preceded by other characters we might well assume to be consonants. For such strings to be pronounceable liquids work better.

Though, as ever, problems arise when we consider the ends of words where ch and sh don't appear: can sonorants be forbidden in the syllable coda?

That's a good question.  I don't know.  I do know that in both Japanese and Mandarin Chinese /m/ may begin but not end a syllable, but /n/ may do both.

Uh oh, we're back to the Chinese theory. It is true that Mandarin Chinese has no syllables with liquid codas, but ones with nasal codas.