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

[Dunsel]

If you're saying that any viable explanation should eventually account for observed constraints such as CLS, slot patterns, grammars, or similar phenomena, I have no disagreement with that.  If you're saying that a model or theory must explain those observations before evidence can even be considered, then I disagree.

The knee-jerk reaction (it was mine too but I changed my mind) is to reject copy-and-mutate methods of generation because they are incomplete: some incentive is needed to account for adherence to relatively rigid patterns. This can't be phonetic preferences only, the positional rigidity goes far beyond that. How the two apparently contradictory aspects can coexist is the question: good adherence to strict rules in general especially for high-frequency words but many exceptions show that some amount of chaotic behavior is allowed (or we don't understand the rules). Can mutation rules alone produce this behavior or is there a need for a separate set of almost-good-enough rules? Occam's razor favors emergent behavior from the copy-and-mutate theory alone, this would be ideal, much better than having an added layer of constraints.

I think we're actually much closer in viewpoint than it may appear.

The question I'm becoming interested in is exactly whether those constraints are emergent or imposed. If copy/mutate requires a separate slot table, grammar, CLS engine, and a dozen additional rule systems, then it becomes much less attractive as an explanation.

If, on the other hand, a relatively small set of positional constraints, inherited word families, and local mutations naturally produce the observed structure, then that is a much stronger result. That's one reason I've been spending time looking at chunk behavior and provenance chains rather than simply adding someone else's rules to the generator. I'd much rather discover that a pattern emerges naturally than hard-code it into the model.

Unfortunately, the best explanation I have so far that fits every observation requires varying amounts of alcohol.

Which, now that I think about it, may be the first theory I've encountered that also explains the stains at the top of the Herbal section.