The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[JoJo_Jost]

Stolfi,

I think we’re still talking about two different levels of structure here.

I’m well aware that in any natural text, the properties of adjacent words can depend on one another (though not always). Complete independence would actually be quite surprising.

But that’s not the specific pattern; it’s not the structure I’m pointing out. In the Voynich manuscript, there’s a deeper structure that can’t be explained by such simple relationships.

I’ll go a little deeper here, because this calls into question your line of reasoning so far.

This strange long-range effect isn’t limited to “edy,” but is found in several parts of the “e” family.

The interesting thing is: the same ranking emerges across multiple e-family contexts. The percentages are rounded:
                t                 k                 ch                sh
-edy      25% (351)    27% (564)    37% (1232)  49% (658)
-ey        15% (151)    17% (297)    24% (883)    37% (444)
-eey      20% (283)    22% (803)    22% (322)    37% (197)
-eody    13% (86)      22% (134)    28% (138)    34% (74)
-eedy    35% (245)    37% (650)    44% (105)    47% (115)

So the same pattern emerges time and again:

t < k < ch < sh

That’s not the same as saying, “-y frequently precedes q-.” Nor is it simply “dy before qo.” The mere “dy” occurs in about 18% of cases (n = 231), while “-shedy” occurs in about 49 % of cases.

The character preceding the e-nucleus thus behaves like a recurring structural factor.

Your examples of general P1/P2 correlations cannot explain this. This table shows that the same internal sequence repeats within the e-family.
And on top of that, there are the structural features of the other VMS families, which, for example, avoid “qo.” As I said, it’s not about individual parts but about this entire system that underlies the VMS.

The explanation based on word pairs doesn’t hold up here, especially since you can remove parts of the most common word pairs and the table’s structure remains largely intact. To verify this, however, we would need to agree on a test.

Taken on their own, however, they still do not explain why the same sequence t < k < ch < sh occurs in several contexts within the e-family, without depending on edy...

And if this would be part of the model of Chinese syllables, what exactly do t, k, ch, and sh do before the e-nucleus, and why do they produce the same order in terms of the probability of following qo?

As I said, this is going to be very difficult to explain.