[split] Does Voynichese evolve from A to B?

[Jorge_Stolfi]

I agree different topics could confound the analysis which is why I was focusing on Herbal A and Herbal B, unless you also think those are different topics?

I am assuming that the illustrations are "basically honest" in the sense that the topic of each section is the obvious topic of the figures.  (Except perhaps for Bio/Balneo, where I think it is still possible that the bathing scenes are meant to disguise the real topic.) 

Thus indeed I assume that Herbal-A and Herbal-B are about the same general topic, namely "herbal".

But even so they could have different "sub-topics".  Like, one may be concerned with tonics for long life and virility, while the other may be about women's conditions and pregnancy.  One may have astrological information, the other may have dosages and prep methods. Etc.

Can you please elaborate a bit on your two theories of a systemic spelling reform and dialect? For spelling reform, how do you envision this having occurred? At some point the author decided to take a break, and implement a vast set of comprehensive changes all at once? You don't think there was any stepwise or gradual movement here?

They are obviously two different processes, but I doubt we can distinguish them by their effects on text statistics.

Many European languages underwent major spelling reforms through history.  Someone just mentioned the Hus reform of Czech spelling.  Spanish had one around 1800, Portuguese had one in the 1940s.  I gather that German and Dutch had significant pervasive reforms too, within the last few centuries.  

The motivation for those reforms was mostly to make the language more phonetic (hence easier to teach and less prone to spelling errors), partly to make it easier to write (typically replacing diacritics by additional pronunciation rules).  

The reforms were generally dozens of independent changes; but doing them all at once was much less disruptive and confusing than doing them one at a time.

I imagine that the VMS Author could have decided for a general spelling reform for the same motives; and chose to do all the changes at once for the same reason.

As for dialect change: it is unlikely that the VMS records knowledge that the Author acquired directly.  The breadth of the topics argues against it.  Most if not all of the contents must have come from pre-existing books, or verbally from informers or teachers. 

Then the difference between Herbal-A and Herbal-B may be that they were derived from two sources that used different dialects of the language.  

Dialect differences can range from barely noticeable to as large as those between distinct languages.  They are  typically systematic replacements of letter groups (letters and letter clusters, prefixes, suffixes, etc,) plus some "random" lexicon replacements, plus some grammar changes.

Here is the same sentence in three dialects of Venetian (which is called a "dialect" of Italian, but is actually very distinct language).  For comparison there is also the version in standard Italian (Tuscan "dialect") and in Neapolitan, another "dialect" that is another distinct language.

• Feltre:  I fradei i è  andà  in cusina a θor le ciaf,  ma no i à  catà gnot.
  
• Venice:  I fradei i ze andai in cusina a tor  e ciavi, ma no i ga catà gnente.
  
• Verona:  I fradei i è  andà  in cosina a tòr le ciave, ma no i à  catà gnente.
  
• Italian: I fratelli sono andati in cucina a prendere le chiavi, ma non hanno trovato niente.
  
• Neapo.:  I fratielli so gghiute a cucina a piglià e chiave, ma nun hanno truvato niente.
  
• English: The brothers went to the kitchen to fetch the keys, but found nothing.
  
  

(Examples by Gemini; the Venetian and Italian seem right, not sure about the Neapolitan.)

The differences between the three dialects of Venetian are still small but pervasive (affecting 7 out of 17 words of that sentence.  There are no lexical replacements or grammar changes in this example, but the Venice dialect  uses a characteristic (non-systematic) pronunciation "ze" for the verb "to  be" ("è" in the other dialects, "sono" in Italian, "so" in Neapolitan.)

Note that the Feltre dialect uses a phoneme "θ", very rare in Italian languages, which sounds somewhat like the "th" in "think" and maps to "t" or "s" or "c" ("tch") in other languages. 

The Venice dialect omits the letter "L" systematically in many contexts.  

All five Italian languages use the same grammatical construction for the past perfect tense, "sono andati" (literally "they are gone") However, while the first "I" in the samples is the article "The", the other two "i" in the Venetian samples are redundant pronouns "they" ("The brothers they went...") a characteristic feature of Venetian grammar.

The initial "h" in both Italian and Neapolitan are silent and should be deleted in any serious spelling reform.

Please find You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. the same text in Portuguese with three different spellings (original from 1899, modern ~1999, phonetic) and its translation into modern Spanish.

If i'm not mistaken, you believe there is just one single author/scribe, is that correct? ... orthographic shifts like the ones you are describing result in far more disjoint groups in MDS space than voynich. The points there do move, almost entirely parallel with one another. Not what we see with voynich, so this explanation is missing some type of mixing element.

Sorry, I don't quite understand this comment. 

But anyway, in my view only the change from Herbal-A to Herbal-B is large enough to suggest a general spelling reform or change of dialect. While the other sections are mostly clearly separable clusters in statistic spaces, my feeling is that those splits can be due to simple changes of topic, style, and structure.

And yes, I believe there was only one scribe through all illustrated sections, because of the style of the figures. And in all sections, including Starred and the "unknown" pages, to my eyes the similarities of the handwriting are much more significant than the differences.  (Moreover, I am not impressed by handwriting analyses that ignore the obvious evidences of pervasive retracing.)

And I believe that there was only one Author, because I don't see any evidence suggesting otherwise.  Besides, he must have been a rather improbable character -- and if there were two of them, it would be improbable squared...

All the best, --stolfi