Re: qokeey (Transition between languages A and B)

[Dana Scott <dfscott@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Philip Neal wrote:

> >No, this is about the stars or 'recipes' section,
> >ff. 102 - 113 or thereabouts (this is from memory).
> >First I thought there are two dialects, but one
> >main difference between about half the pages and
> >the other half is the occurrence of the 'word'
> >qokeey which is either very frequent or non-existent.
>
> You are right, aren't you? The pattern is statistically highly significant.
> I attach a file analysing the distribution of qokeey in the paragraphs of
> folios 103r-116r like this:
>
> page    lines   paragraphs
> 103r    54      11011 00040 12211 344
>
> This means that 103r has 54 lines and 18 paragraphs, and that qokeey
> occurs once in the first paragraph, once in the second, not at all in
> the third etc. There is a rough symmetry between folios on the same
> sheet of the quire, but this is hard to quantify.
>
> I would describe the pattern in terms of three distributions:
>
> If a paragraph contains the word qokeey, there is a 38% chance that
> the next paragraph will contain the word qokeey.
> If a paragraph contains the word qokeey, there is a 40% chance that
> qokeey occurs more than once.
> If the current word is qokeey, there is a 6% chance that the next
> word will be qokeey.
>
> The first two distributions are indicative of a word with a
> highly specific content such as a proper name: i.e. a biblical
> concordance would show that King David is not mentioned in some
> books, while in others he is the subject of whole chapters and
> mentioned several times in a verse.
>
> The third distribution is not characteristic of names, is very
> characteristic of all the high frequency Voynich words, and is
> strong evidence for Currier's view that the words are not
> words at all.
>

Very good. I suggest that these thoughts be kept in mind and that we try to
think of ways that it might apply to the Plant Kingdom.

Regards,
Dana Scott

> I think I will note this on my web site with acknowledgements.
>
> Philip Neal
>
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>                        Name: qokeey table.txt
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