1 hour ago
(This post was last modified: 1 hour ago by npcompl33t.)
(3 hours ago)dashstofsk wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It would be interesting to see a graph of f p counts plotted against their paragraph word size. A flat graph would show the 'top room' effect to be true.
They are definitely preferred in paragraph opening lines, which means either:
- They are nonsense (unique letters can't just appear in opening lines), or
- They are elaborate forms of K/T or some combination of glyphs
The issue, is that as Muaro pointed out, they do not easily substitute in for K or T. LFD proposed they substitute for Ke/Te, but they are not similar to Ke/Te either.
My theory, based on the above data, is that P was initially equal to K or T, before the VMS was written. Maybe in some previous document or development phase.
But by the start of 1a / the VMS, K/T has already diverged from P, and they can no longer be used interchangeably.
- This is seen most obviously in the development of the E character. Ke/Te do appear in 1a, but they are much more rare than later, and appear to be a recent development
- There is also a noticeable gap between the rate of pch and tch /kch. Maybe Kch->Ke?
- pche and pchedy rise roughly at a similar rate, with a lag, compared to Ke and Kee, showing an asymmetric response to the e character
This means there is no real easy way to turn a given P into A K. It is possibly arguable that Pch = Ke, and Pchedy = Kee, but I'm struggling to come up with an explanation for why this would occur. Self Citation seems like the easiest explanation, its possible there is some kind of reform or semantic preserving transformation but it would be very awkward.
It is also clear P does not appear to be an abbreviation. P words appear 'longer' on average (although it depends on how exactly glyphs are counted).
ch, che, e, and ee all appear mostly identical, the only difference between ch and ee is the bar connecting ch , as stolfi pointed out. For K and P to be equal, there must have been a more archaic version of voynich where either e or ch were not yet characters, and K must have started diverging from P at that point, because as i stated, they are already different at the start of the MS.