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

[Dunsel]

 A small legality system plus local copy-and-mutate behavior operating over a visible working set.

Either I misunderstand the ledger, or it produces a huge number of unattested words, ones that would be expected if using the proposed copy+mutate method. For example, dain is a common word, so its simple mutations should be common, correct?

The following are simple mutations of dain and seem to pass the ledger test, while never appear in the whole manuscript, as far as I know:

dein (doesn't appear in the MS)
daon (doesn't appear in the MS)
diin (absent as a word, otaldiin appears once)
gain (doesn't appear in the MS)
main (doesn't appear in the MS)
daiy (doesn't appear in the MS)

and I think I can generate 10+ more.

Edit: I removed two examples from the list - dais and daid, I probably skipped over them when testing, they do appear at least once each. In any case, dain appears more than 400 times in the MS. 'y' is a very common word ending character. daiy is valid according to the ledger, I would expect dozens if not a hundred of daiy's in the MS, why there aren't any?

No, you understand the ledger just fine.  If you were creating your own Voynich, all of those are legal words and could create your seeds.  But I'm going to bastardize a Jeff Goldblum quote, "Just because you could, doesn't mean you should." 

If you wanted to create a book of gibberish but have it look like a real language, you wouldn't create every form possible.  You looked at those words and realized the generator COULD produce them.  But the real Voynich doesn't because the scribe had to decide if they SHOULD create them and chose not to.  Creating your own book, you would decide what SHOULD be included.  Does this word look right.  Am I using words that kinda look like other words I've already copied and mutated.  Am I creating a chol family with this word. Am I creating a member of the daiin family with this word. 

The key word to all of this is constrained.

There are many works of art I look at and think that's just garbage.  Splatter on a canvas.  Others see form, pattern.  When I look at a Rembrandt, I see huge amounts of constraint in the choice of colors, what brush strokes.  If this method I'm proposing is correct, you have to look at it like it's art. Why didn't the scribe choose that word? What constraint kept them from making dein? Was that choice intentional?

Once you look at what they did create instead of what they COULD have created, you begin to realize that that constraint is why it still looks like a language but isn't.  And, if I'm right, that constraint has been VERY effective. Wouldn't you say?