A One-Page Ledger Method for Generating Voynich-Like Text

[Torsten]

Why would a realistic copy-mutate system stay conservative? There is nothing that dictates this. 
The number of rules observed over tens of thousands of words are quite complex, and they are indeed rules.

This is, in a way, backwards logic.
We see that the word variations are very strict. Therefore, if the text was generated by modifying previous words, it would have to have followed strict rules. That is the correct direction of the logic.
There is no reason to assume that there would be very strict rules (which are then broken somewhat gradually).

EDIT:
Let's do some rough counts.
The word chedy could be considered to have four characters. 
Limiting to edit distance 1:
Each of these could be changed into another, leading to 4 times, say, 20 options.
Each of these could be deleted, leading to 4 more.
A new character could be added in each of 5 slots, so 5 times 20 more.
6 pairs could be swapped (not sure if that counts as edit distance 1).
We are close to 200 alternatives. 
Possibly 10 exist.

We can consider two alternative methods for a creation of a meaningless text using word permutations.

Method A: 
first, a vocabulary is set up using word patterns and their variations
then, a text is composed by somewhat aribitrarily picking words from this vocabulary/dictionary

Method B:
a text is generated by creating new words from previous ones 'on the fly'
then, the resulting vocabulary is the collection of all these words

It should be clear that the very limited set of allowed permutations much better fits with method A than method B.

The calculation of 200 possible edit-distance-1 modifications treats each EVA character as an independent substitutable unit. But the scribe doesn't work in EVA — he works at the stroke  level or at the level of whole prefix- and suffix groups. The natural stroke-level modifications of "chedy" are far fewer than 200:

- "ch" → "sh" (one stroke) = "shedy"
- "e" → "ee" (one stroke) = "cheedy"
- "edy" → "ey" (replace edy with ey) = "chey"
- "ch-" → "ok-" (replace the prefix) = "okedy"

The scribe didn't use an algorithm to find all theoretically possible modifications. He did what humans tend to do. Why bother to invent new modification rules if the set generated so far is already sufficient? Therefore he repeated with the repertoire of modifications rules he had already used before. The "200 possible" alternatives include modifications like replacing "e" with "k" or "d" with "q" — changes no scribe would make because they cross stroke-family boundaries and replacement patterns. The gap between 200 and 10 isn't evidence for a pre-designed vocabulary. It's evidence that the modification process operates either at the stroke level or at the level of whole prefix or suffix groups, but not the EVA character level.

And more fundamentally: it is impossible to produce all things that are theoretically possible. Every choice determines what comes next. After writing "chedy", the scribe sees "chedy." He modifies it to "shedy". Now "shedy" is visible. He modifies that to "shey." Each step constrains the next. The 190 "unmade" modifications were never live options — the scribe was never at a point where those were the natural next step from what was visible on the page. This is why on one page '-edy' forms dominate while on the next page '-ol' or '-aiin' forms do — the visible source words differ, producing different paths. Note: On You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) there is even one paragraph with "-ody" words and one paragraphs with "-edy"-words.  

This is true of any text. In theory Shakespeare could have written an uncounted number of possible plays. He wrote his version of Hamlet. We don't ask "why didn't he write one of the other possible plays or a different version of Hamlet?" because each word chosen determined what came next. The same applies here. The variants we see are the path taken. The variants we don't see are paths the scribe was never standing at the fork to take — or chose not to.