13-08-2025, 06:31 PM
Sorry, Gabriel, but this explanation isn't convincing at all. Of course, there is a structure to the Voynich script, but not a linguistic structure, as you seem to assume. Once you've assumed this, you do your best to make Zipf's law fit this assumption.
Simply put, empirical data do not support Zipf's law, even taking into account the ambiguities in the spaces between groups of glyphs. It's not only that the second most common word is seen more often than what Zipf's law predicts since as you say the trend is more important, but as I said before, the third and fourth words in frequency deviate from the trend much more than expected by Zipf's law. The fourth most frequent word appears more than twice as often as predicted by theory, and that's because there is no language in the Voynich and therefore no word at all.
Simply put, empirical data do not support Zipf's law, even taking into account the ambiguities in the spaces between groups of glyphs. It's not only that the second most common word is seen more often than what Zipf's law predicts since as you say the trend is more important, but as I said before, the third and fourth words in frequency deviate from the trend much more than expected by Zipf's law. The fourth most frequent word appears more than twice as often as predicted by theory, and that's because there is no language in the Voynich and therefore no word at all.