Re: Correlation between text and pictures

[Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

    > [Rene:] Of course, there is a very strong point against
    > [text-picture] correlation: the Herbal-A (HeA) and -B (HeB)
    > pages have the same type of illustrations, yet vastly different
    > text statistics. If we want to maintain that the HeA and HeB
    > text are about the same subject, we have a few difficult
    > questions to answer.

I don't think it is such a strong argument. There is no
reason to believe that the pages were written in the 
order they are now bound; and several good reasons to believe
that they weren't (e.g. that two-page illustration in Bio,
with the water channel connecing the two pages).

If we assume that HeA and HeB were written at different times, with a
gap of months or years between them, it is quite possible that the
differences in vocabulary are due to a change of style, which could be
due to several reasons. E.g.

  HeA:  Wild Pansy. Good for red eye, ingrown toenail. 
        Pick leaf if moon full with knife of silver.
        Boil leaf in wine, drink two time each day.
  
  HeB:  The Wild Pansy was recommended by Dioscorides for red eyes,
        and also soothes ingrown toenails. The leaves should be
        collected at full moon with a silver sickle, then boiled in
        wine, and the infusion should be taken twice daily.
        
Note that the digraph "he" and final "s" occur only in the second
version...

    > Several years ago, I pointed out the fact that some pages
    > in this quire have frequent occurrences of the word
    > 'qokeey' (4OFCC9) while others do not have it at all.
    > This is also the case for f58. Zero occurrences on the
    > recto and six on the verso. Coincidence?
    
I don't think this is exceptional.  I have seen such page-specific
words in other sections, too.  Many words occur several times
on a certain page, or on two consecutive pages, then are absent 
on other pages.  The following listing of the VMS text highlights
some of those words:

  http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/Notes/015/pages-html/index.html

Here are some of the more conspicuous words with "lumpy" distributions
in herbal-A. The notation (m/n) means that the word (or word family)
occurs m times on this page, and n times in the whole section.
  
  f1v:   chodo/chody (4/33), dol/dal (6/86) 
  f2r:   don/dan (4/11)
  f3r:   chom/cham (6/23), ycheor,qocheor (3/7) 
  f3v:   chom (3/23) 
  f6v:   ychear,ycheor (2/7)
  f8r:   kaiin,taiin (3/32)
  f8v:   cheor/chear (4/44), chol (10/219)
  f14v:  dy (9/115) 
  f16v:  chody,chydy (3/33)
  f17v:  tchol/fchol/kchol (3/33)
  f23r:  qokchol/ofchol/okchol/otchol (6/89), dal/d0l (5/86)
  f23v:  ol/al (5/67)
  f24r:  shom (3/5)
  f27v:  dsho/dshy (3/16)
  f30r:  chey (6/66)
  f35r:  taiin,paiin (4/32)
  f38v:  key/tey (3/9)
  f42r:  shol (12/100)
  f47v:  chody (2/33)
  f49r:  chey/cheo (5/66)
  f53r:  okod,qokod (3/13)
  f53v:  opod,qotod (2/13)
  f54r:  dam,dom (6/39), al/ol (6/67)
  f56r:  kchol/tchol/kchal (5/33)
  f56v:  kcheey, tcheey (3/10)
  f90r2: al,ol (4/67)
  f93r:  s (10/123), dol,dal (5/86)
  f93v:  chody (3/33),
  f96r:  or/ar (6/73), ctheor/cpheor (2/8)
  f96v:  key,teo (2/9)
  ...
  
So, for example, there are 23 occurrences of <chom> and <cham> in the
Herbal-A section, of which 9 are on on folio f3. There are 11
occurrences of <olain>/<qolain>/<qaloin> in the biological section,
of which 7 are on page f76r. And so on.

The lumpy distribution of certain words can be seen also on 
samples of ordinary English (check pages 201r and following 
in the aforementioned site).  So this is just one more 
aspect in which Voynichese looks like a typical natural language...

All the best,

--stolfi