Similarity of Voynichese glyphs according to their immediate statistical environment

[Mauro]

I will add the even earlier paper by Timm You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (2014-2015). Of course the observation that similarly looking glyphs behave similarly is extremely interesting.

Based on the observation that it is possible to generate other words, which exist in the VMS, by replacing similar shaped glyphs, it is possible to list the following rules:

"in", "iin" and "iiin" can replace each other (in - iin - iiin) 
"e", "ee" and "eee" can replace each other (e - ee - eee) 
"ee" and "ch" can replace each other (ee - ch) 
"ch" and "sh" can replace each other (ch - Sh) 
"k", "t", "p" and "f" can replace each other (k - t - p - f) 
"chk", "ckh" and "eke" can replace each other (chk - cKh - eke) 
"o" and "a" can replace each other (o - a) 
"o" and "y" can replace each other (o - y) 
"n", "r" and "m" can replace each other (n - R - m) 
"l", "r" and "m" can replace each other (l - R - m) 
"r" and "s" can replace each other (R - s) 
"s" and "d" can replace each other (s - d)

Thank you.

Timm is probably using a different definition than mine because my results are quite different. For instance I find too that 'r' and 'm' have a moderately low average distance (0.26 in Herbal A), but 'n' is pretty far both from 'r' (av. distance = 0.63) and from 'm' (av. distance = 0.55). This because the distance according to the following character of 'n' from 'm' and 'r' is quite small (they are all mostly followed by space), but the distance according to the preceding character is high (1.1 and 1.08 respectively).

I find 'o' and 'a' to be 0.55 apart, moderately high, same for 'o' and 'y' (0.50): they are not grouped together. Same for 'r' and 's (0.52), while 's' and 'd' are moderately similar (0.39, they barely escaped the tables of my previous post, the threshold was 0.35).

I will check 'ee' vs. 'ch/sh', but I very much doubt they are similar. 'in', 'iin', 'iiin' might well be similar, but I need to test it before being sure.

One caveat is that the results depend on the section of the manuscript examined, ie. 'k' 't' 'p' and 'f' could indeed be seen as a single group in Herbal A (and 'ch', 'sh', 'cth', ckh', 'cph' and cfh' can be added to the mix, see the table You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.), but in Balneological 'k/t', 'p/f' and 'ch/sh' are well separated.