Voynich words evolve over a linear sequence

[npcompl33t]

My working hypothesis was that text was generated/encrypted using paper volvelles (note the plural). These would inevitably wear out and literally fall apart from repeated rotations, so these would be replaced by new volvelles. These new volvelles would still satisfy the original system, but would not necessarily have the exact same glyphs/combos. Thus, there would be abrupt points where certain words and glyph combos would disappear, appear or change frequency.

I've also considered volvelles in the past, especially after reading Zaterra's 2022 slot grammar paper. Something along the lines of Ramon Llull's Ars Demonstrativa, or perhaps the zā’irja, would produce slot preferences and even supply motive for the construction of a unique script in Llull's case.

In the past when i've tested these I haven't found a combination that could reasonably produce the observed voynich. However I have not revisited these ideas with respect to a changing gradient. I'm not certain if swapping volvelles would cause a gradient like the one the data appears to present, I would imagine they would produce stepwise changes, but that is actually easy enough to test.

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One more small question please: if I understood correctly, your previous study worked by bifolios, while the one in this thread works by manuscript sections (all the bifolios of each section clumped together), is it right?

That's correct, this groups them altogether by section. You can actually see the bifolio level view of the same data, it looks much noisier than the above section totals. 

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But one would expect the changes to be "random" only if one expects the text to be gibberish.  I guess that this is your preferred theory, yes?  

@Jorge_Stolfi This is not my position at all, the point i'm making across these posts is that it appears very possible that semantic meaning is preserved over these transformations. That is what I'm trying to test -- is there a convincing way words could pass through this evolution that appears to preserve meaning. For example, the changes might be a result of them altering the script, perhaps adding abbreviated forms or elaborations. That is why I am also testing vulgate. I want to see how a language variant optimized for abbreviations affects the change in word frequencies. 

There are two outcomes: either there appears to be a convincing way that words are being changed that preserves meaning, or the transformations appear to destroy information. The latter would be strong evidence for gibberish, but so far, I have not seen that the former is not possible. 

Which I think is the case for VMS sections like Herbal-A or Stars: at the present stage, I do not see the justification for splitting them into sub-sections.

Even if you don't think there is a gradient, there is ample evidence these exhibit different enough glyph and word patterns to support splitting them into sub-sections.