[split] Volvelles or Disks

[Yavernoxia]

Alicia, I think your hypothesis is very interesting and thoughtfully developed. The three-ring wheel system makes a lot of sense to me as a way to explain how the text could have been generated. The prefix–root–suffix structure we see so often in the VMS would fit naturally with a mechanical setup like that, and it seems to account quite well for the regularity and repetition patterns in the manuscript.

I find the idea that the text may have been generated mechanically rather than linguistically quite fascinating. A system based on rotating elements or volvelle-like devices could plausibly produce structured output without relying on conventional grammar or semantics. In some ways, that feels like a more logical explanation for certain statistical features than assuming a fully developed underlying language.

Regarding this, do you think the underlying text is actually meaningful? Within the context of the volvelle hypothesis, which possibility makes more sense to you: that the wheels were encoding coherent content, or that they were simply generating structured but ultimately non-semantic output AKA gibberish?