[split] Implications of multiple scribes

[LisaFaginDavis]

Since I'm not a linguist I am totally unqualified to comment on the linguistic analyses presented above, other than to say thank you to Marco for diving in. A few other remarks:

1) I think it is important to remember that there is very little text written by Scribe 5 in comparison to the others, and so we may have to be cautious when drawing conclusions based on an analysis of the work of that scribe;
2) Because the pharmacological bifolium 88/89 is nested in the botanical bifolium 87/90, I suspect that both are misbound. 87/90 almost certainly belongs in the earlier botanical section (in spite of its unusual format) and 88/89 with the other pharmacological section (99-102). Bifolia 93/96 (by Scribe 1) and 94/95 (Scribe 3) are likely misbound as well. 
3) I would be interested to learn if anything interesting results from analyzing the Scribe 3 bifolium 58/65 alongside 94/95 (also Scribe 3).

I have some thoughts about the staining and rebinding and misordering, but I'll save those for a different thread...

[Torsten]

One problem in the interpretation of these figures is, that pages with relatively little text will have larger error bars, and we can't see that. The precise location of these pages is not as accurate as those of pages with a lot of text.

Only You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. you suggested to use percentages in order to give all pages the same weight. I appreciate that you now argue in the opposite direction.

With respect to the scribal hands, in my opinion (and based on the PCA plots) scribe 5 has his own little area on the right-hand edge of the language-B pages, while scribes 3 and 4 can hardly be distinguished from each other, but are concentrated below the scribe-2 language-B pages.
I consider this a weak confirmation both of Lisa's hand identification and the suggestion that different scribes generate different text properties. However, the second point is a correlation-type correspondence which may not be causal, but can be the consequence of another external cause/reason.

The observation that the scribes can hardly be distinguished from each other obviously contradicts the suggestion that different scribes generate different text properties.

Moreover, it is possible to describe the Voynich text as gradual evolution of a single system from 'state A' to 'state B' (see Timm & Schinner 2020, p. 7). You also argue that it is possible to split the stars section into two parts. You named the parts Stars-B (low correlation with Bio-B) and Stars-Bio (high correlation with Bio-B) (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). Since the Voynich text is self-similar in this aspect it would also be possible to split Currier A into early Currier A (low correlation with pharma folios) and late Currier A (high correlation with pharma folios) etc. Since the statistical data point to a gradual evolution of a single system the idea of different scribes wouldn't help to explain the text we actually see.

[LisaFaginDavis]

1) I think it is important to remember that there is very little text written by Scribe 3 and Scribe 5 in comparison to the others, and so we may have to be cautious when drawing conclusions based on an analysis of the work of those scribes;

In your paper you say Scribe 3 wrote the entire stars section (Quire 20) (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). This would mean that scribe 3 wrote nearly a third of the whole text.

Ha! Of course you're right. I'll edit my original comment!

[ReneZ]

One problem in the interpretation of these figures is, that pages with relatively little text will have larger error bars, and we can't see that. The precise location of these pages is not as accurate as those of pages with a lot of text.

Only You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. you suggested to use percentages in order to give all pages the same weight. I appreciate that you now argue in the opposite direction.

That smaller number of words per page cause that the statistics for such a page have larger uncertainties is a fact one cannot change. I was clearly not proposing anything to the contrary.

With respect to the scribal hands, in my opinion (and based on the PCA plots) scribe 5 has his own little area on the right-hand edge of the language-B pages, while scribes 3 and 4 can hardly be distinguished from each other, but are concentrated below the scribe-2 language-B pages.
I consider this a weak confirmation both of Lisa's hand identification and the suggestion that different scribes generate different text properties. However, the second point is a correlation-type correspondence which may not be causal, but can be the consequence of another external cause/reason.

The observation that the scribes can hardly be distinguished from each other obviously contradicts the suggestion that different scribes generate different text properties.

One can distinguish four, while two coincide. So my (weakly) positive conclusion is clearly jsutified.