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The oddities of the bigram "ed"
- The oddities of the bigram "ed"
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RE: The oddities of the bigram "ed"
ReneZ > 17-02-2026, 07:32 AM
Two points:
- my question about "eed" was related to the suggestion that "ed" might be a single unit. While this is tempting, this then leaves the question whether "eed" is another unit, or should be read as "e" + "ed". Neither seem satisfactory to me. (words ending -edy can also end -ey, or -eedy, or -eey)
- in the graph where the text has been chopped into equal size units, and the "ed" bigram moves much closer to the rest, were the page boundaries respected? I strongly suspect not, so the pages without "ed" have been 'contaminated' by contents from pages with the bigram.
On the second point, a related statistic is given on this page: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
in the table under "At the highest level". This gives the % of words including "ed" in the various sections, which is largely independent of the page length, which was the desired point. -
RE: The oddities of the bigram "ed"
Jorge_Stolfi > 17-02-2026, 07:44 AM
(16-02-2026, 11:27 PM)Dunsel Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Culpepers total rk occurrences: 379/2 = 189 & 190. And that's 1321 words per page. 76%
Seems right. My version has N=222 occurrences of "rk", hence my suggestion would be N/2 = 111 pages. My version has 123832 words, so it would be 1115 words/page.
It is hard to tell whether "rk" is anomalous in your plot because all the rare digraphs, including "rk", are squeezed into the few mm near the left margin.
Maybe the graphs would be more legible if the vertical axis was changed to the percentage of pages without the digraph, and both axes were in log scale. Then I guess that you would get a more or less straight line, similar to the Zipf plot in log-log scale.
If you say that "rk" occurs in only 76% of the pages, instead of the expected 86%, that would already indicate uneven distribution. Not as dramatic as ed, but it would show how topic can cause the uneven distribution of certain digraphs.
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: The oddities of the bigram "ed"
nablator > 17-02-2026, 10:37 AM
(16-02-2026, 12:46 AM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It is easy to explain if we assume that the text is gibberish. One scribe liked to use it while other didnt. And Currier languages correspond with supposed different hands. That would be all.
Meaningful explanation is harder. Writing in another plain language would probably change more text properties, not only this
It's not "only this". There are other bigram statistics (like "lk", "ll", "lr"), and other properties that Currier noticed... -
RE: The oddities of the bigram "ed"
ReneZ > 17-02-2026, 12:16 PM
In general, it is very hard to explain how the Voynich text can be gibberish, due to its many consistencies throughout the MS. As a consequence, it cannot be used to 'easily' explain anything.
In this particular case, the use of 'ed' is not an on/off from two different hands, but there are intermediate stages (small as they are), and these are in yet another hand.
The emergence (or disappearance - less likely) of 'ed' looks like an evolution which is independent of the meaningful vs. meaningless question. -
RE: The oddities of the bigram "ed"
Aga Tentakulus > 17-02-2026, 08:54 PM
Example:
‘ed’ is a form of ‘edere’.
The Pons translator only has ‘edo’, in the ‘first person’ form.
Fundamentally, no one speaks like a dictionary. -
RE: The oddities of the bigram "ed"
Dunsel > Yesterday, 12:41 AM
(17-02-2026, 07:32 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Two points:
- my question about "eed" was related to the suggestion that "ed" might be a single unit. While this is tempting, this then leaves the question whether "eed" is another unit, or should be read as "e" + "ed". Neither seem satisfactory to me. (words ending -edy can also end -ey, or -eedy, or -eey)
- in the graph where the text has been chopped into equal size units, and the "ed" bigram moves much closer to the rest, were the page boundaries respected? I strongly suspect not, so the pages without "ed" have been 'contaminated' by contents from pages with the bigram.
On the second point, a related statistic is given on this page: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
in the table under "At the highest level". This gives the % of words including "ed" in the various sections, which is largely independent of the page length, which was the desired point.
I believe, on all of those charts that are the ed scatter charts that page boundaries are respected. The Y axis is the normalized page count. If I goofed one, please point it out and I'll fix it.
I've got several more posts planned, including one that's going to explain a LOT about ed and why it even came into prominence. I'll say this, it's been known for a long time that the Voynich is bigram specific. And what I've found doesn't dispute that one bit. Trigrams are a bi-product. -
RE: The oddities of the bigram "ed"
Dunsel > Yesterday, 12:46 AM
(17-02-2026, 07:44 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(16-02-2026, 11:27 PM)Dunsel Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Culpepers total rk occurrences: 379/2 = 189 & 190. And that's 1321 words per page. 76%
Seems right. My version has N=222 occurrences of "rk", hence my suggestion would be N/2 = 111 pages. My version has 123832 words, so it would be 1115 words/page.
It is hard to tell whether "rk" is anomalous in your plot because all the rare digraphs, including "rk", are squeezed into the few mm near the left margin.
Maybe the graphs would be more legible if the vertical axis was changed to the percentage of pages without the digraph, and both axes were in log scale. Then I guess that you would get a more or less straight line, similar to the Zipf plot in log-log scale.
If you say that "rk" occurs in only 76% of the pages, instead of the expected 86%, that would already indicate uneven distribution. Not as dramatic as ed, but it would show how topic can cause the uneven distribution of certain digraphs.
All the best, --stolfi
You are likely right that changing the scale would blur things, I'm certain. All of those scatter charts are a simple percentage on the y axis, count on the x axis. I'll kindly ask you to wait for my third planned post and then, I believe you'll see your 'rk' analogy is nothing like ed.
(17-02-2026, 10:37 AM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(16-02-2026, 12:46 AM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It is easy to explain if we assume that the text is gibberish. One scribe liked to use it while other didnt. And Currier languages correspond with supposed different hands. That would be all.
Meaningful explanation is harder. Writing in another plain language would probably change more text properties, not only this
It's not "only this". There are other bigram statistics (like "lk", "ll", "lr"), and other properties that Currier noticed...
Check pt 2 of this series. You'll see that it's not just those. 60 new bigrams get added in the ed+ pages. -
RE: The oddities of the bigram "ed"
Dunsel > Yesterday, 12:51 AM
(17-02-2026, 12:16 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In general, it is very hard to explain how the Voynich text can be gibberish, due to its many consistencies throughout the MS. As a consequence, it cannot be used to 'easily' explain anything.
In this particular case, the use of 'ed' is not an on/off from two different hands, but there are intermediate stages (small as they are), and these are in yet another hand.
The emergence (or disappearance - less likely) of 'ed' looks like an evolution which is independent of the meaningful vs. meaningless question.
Oh, the stage is not small, not at all. It's very blatant if you know where to look. It'll be in part 3. -
RE: The oddities of the bigram "ed"
ReneZ > Yesterday, 12:54 AM
(Yesterday, 12:41 AM)Dunsel Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I believe, on all of those charts that are the ed scatter charts that page boundaries are respected.
OK thanks!
This means that, while 'ed' is essentially absent on about half the pages, these pages are relatively shorter, and if one counts 'normalised pages' by splitting the longer B pages into several parts, 'ed' is essentially absent on much less than half these normalised pages.