Non-extant vords

The template presented in recent posts on these pages isn’t intended to generate vords. It’s purpose is diagnostic. It is not intended to duplicate the process by which the text was generated.

Is it such a great problem that such devices could be used to create lots of non-vords? Or non-extant vords?

What of non-extant vords?

oltol occurs once, but oltor never.

Is there any hard and fast rule that eliminates oltor as a possibility. Arguably, it is not forbidden, it is just not present in our sample.

Similarly, qochol is to be found, but qochor is not, even though ochor is found 19 times and ochol only twelve.

okeel appears yet oteel does not, even though [k] and [t] are generally interchangeable.

Similarly there are any number of non-extant vords:

qopod
dosh
cheechom
dochor (yet chor occurs 527 times)
qochor
otolshy
keeral
dashaiin
otoro
qoteel
ochad
qotocho

All of them are conforming, and look the part, but none are in our text. It is a moot question whether they might exist in a larger sample. But they are not inherently impossible. They are possible vords. Can we say they are invalid or not permitted?

Whereas, some form like fidoiimyp is a complete non-starter. It is not only not to be found, we can say with confidence that it is not a valid vord in any possible universe.

All we can say of conforming forms that are not present is that they are not present. Assuredly, some might fall foul of some obscure rule or process, but in many cases there is no obvious reason why an otherwise conforming vord is not in the lexicon. Some quite possible permutations of common vords just do not appear.

The placement of glyphs is much more restrictive than the template allows, but even so there are many forms entirely within the known rules that do not appear.

We can expect that vords with the prefix [qa-] are exceedingly unlikely, even though the template implies they are as possible as [qo-]. But there are plenty of [qo-] forms that are quite possible by all available criteria but are not in our text.

If nothing else, then, this feature/fault of such templates at least alerts us to the fact that our text is a selection from all possible vords. The lexicon is not exhaustive. Even though the text often rehearses various permutations of a form, there are apparently possible forms that are not represented.

In natural languages there are sundry reasons for this, many of them the accidents of history. English knows fog and log and dog but not mog or rog or zog. The reasons why some permutations are taken up in the Voynich text but other seemingly possible forms do not appear is as mysterious as everything else.

R. B.