Voynichese Phonotactics

[Sam G]

We are in agreement that y acts like a vowel (or at least like a and o, which we believe to be vowels) in certain places. We also agree that l is a consonant (whether it can be syllabic is another matter). The core part of our disagreement is that y acts like a consonant, specifically l, in some places.

Basically.  I see how you could think of y as solely representing a vowel... but I don't think it's right.

The two examples you give above, oy and ey, can be paralleled in the behaviour of other vowels and don't need to be explained as y acting like a consonant. Thus:

oy (146 tokens) is parallel to oa (282 tokens) and oo (84 tokens)
ey (4025 tokens) is parallel to ea (448 tokens) and eo (3454 tokens)

But if you consider word-final occurrences only, the stats will look different.  oa, ea, and oo are going to be nearly non-existent.