Re: VMs: What are Neal keys

[Nick Pelling <nickpelling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

At 17:54 12/08/2004 +0000, Philip Neal wrote:
> What I pointed out is that you seldom get a Voynich word
> which ends in a gallows character or, what amounts to the
> same thing, a gallows character followed by a space. The few
> cases where it happens tend to occur rather more than half
> way across the first line of a page. I have statistics somewhere,
> based on the Takehashi transcription.

As I mentioned, Philip also pointed out to me that many are accompanied by 
a second (matching) gallows a little further along the top line: if 
statistically significant, this pattern would be highly suggestive of an 
artificial (ie non-language-like, and non-shorthand-like) construct.

> I am not committed to the idea that such gallows end a
> key sequence though it is a plausible suggestion (also
> the term 'Neal keys' was not coined by me). What I do
> think is that these gallows are evidence that the text
> displays a kind of periodicity above the level of individual
> words.

I think that if you accept that these anomalous gallows patterns do 
indicate some recurrent pattern greater than a single word within the whole 
text, then you almost automatically have to rule out hoax hypotheses (where 
a randomising mechanism [whether conscious, mechanical or unconscious] 
drives the text generation) as well. BTW, Gordon Rugg's simplified model of 
Voynichese deliberately does not include the first line of each page, as he 
felt (perhaps tellingly) that such lines were too complex or messy for his 
grille-and-table method.

FWIW, I think that a rigorous analysis of this mechanism would be the best 
currently available way to demonstrate the likelihood that the VMs does 
indeed contain meaningful (but enciphered) content.

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling..... 


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