17-03-2026, 01:25 PM
@qimqu Your findings are very consistent with the results in Timm & Schinner 2020, "The generation of the Voynich manuscript text: Results of a statistical analysis" (Cryptologia, 44(5), pp. 387-420). Some specific points of overlap:
Regarding the core: You found that the first token of a burst is not the best candidate for the origin of words. We addressed this for page boundaries: "There was a similar problem for the author of the VMS every time he/she was starting a new (empty) page. In such a case it was probably useful to use another page as source. There is some evidence that the scribe preferred the last completed sheet for this purpose" (p. 11).
Regarding the types of modification: You found that almost 40% are exact copies and 30% are single-character substitutions, with insertions and deletions much less frequent. We formalized three rules (pp. 9-10):
1) Replace one or more glyphs by similar ones. For example, <chol> could be the origin of <shol>, <chor>, <char>, <chal> etc. by substituting similar ligatures.
2) Add or remove a prefix. The most common prefixes (<d->, <ch->, <ok->, <qok->) combine with various suffixes to produce much of the vocabulary (Table 3, p. 10).
3) Combine two source words to create a new word.
Regarding directionality: You found that relationships occur both within the same line and between lines, and that the system depends on "a wider set of visible shapes on the page." This suggests the scribe was influenced by what was visible above the current line, not only by the word just written.
Regarding the concentration of changes at word beginnings: You found that insertions and deletions concentrate at the beginning of words. This corresponds to our prefix operations (rule 2), which we identified as one of the three main mechanisms of text generation.
Your finding that "the further away the source is, the more it is transformed" is an interesting new observation that is not explicitly in our paper but is consistent with the model — a more distant source provides a less precise visual template for copying.
Regarding the core: You found that the first token of a burst is not the best candidate for the origin of words. We addressed this for page boundaries: "There was a similar problem for the author of the VMS every time he/she was starting a new (empty) page. In such a case it was probably useful to use another page as source. There is some evidence that the scribe preferred the last completed sheet for this purpose" (p. 11).
Regarding the types of modification: You found that almost 40% are exact copies and 30% are single-character substitutions, with insertions and deletions much less frequent. We formalized three rules (pp. 9-10):
1) Replace one or more glyphs by similar ones. For example, <chol> could be the origin of <shol>, <chor>, <char>, <chal> etc. by substituting similar ligatures.
2) Add or remove a prefix. The most common prefixes (<d->, <ch->, <ok->, <qok->) combine with various suffixes to produce much of the vocabulary (Table 3, p. 10).
3) Combine two source words to create a new word.
Regarding directionality: You found that relationships occur both within the same line and between lines, and that the system depends on "a wider set of visible shapes on the page." This suggests the scribe was influenced by what was visible above the current line, not only by the word just written.
Regarding the concentration of changes at word beginnings: You found that insertions and deletions concentrate at the beginning of words. This corresponds to our prefix operations (rule 2), which we identified as one of the three main mechanisms of text generation.
Your finding that "the further away the source is, the more it is transformed" is an interesting new observation that is not explicitly in our paper but is consistent with the model — a more distant source provides a less precise visual template for copying.
![[+]](https://www.voynich.ninja/images/collapse_collapsed.png)