Vords of Interest - qopal

There is an avalanche of statistical and computational studies of the Voynich text, a truly withering array of studies, linguistic and cryptological, and otherwise: I am not inclined to try to contribute further to the morass. My task is to try to assess and make judgements about what it all means. As I see it, there are too many crime lab technicians and not enough detectives working on this case.

But that doesn't relieve me of the duty to get to know the text first hand with some intimacy. My method is just to jump in and explore, vord by vord. I assume that vords are discrete entities of some significance. Whether they are words in a language, encryptions, formulae, or what, is another matter.

I am especially interested in the distribution of vords by topic, their relationship to the illustrations, and in relation to the overall structure and composition of the work. I see the work as an ensemble of material, and chiefly two corpora, two bodies of material, these being united by the section of cosmological circles in the middle of the codex. This is explained in previous posts.

In any case, certain vords of interest emerge in the course of such musings. In the first instance, these are just curiosities. Here is one:

Qopal is of interest for only one reason: it occurs twice in the manuscript, once at the very beginning and once at the very end.

We find it on page 3r and we find it on page 112r. They are the only appearances. A few pages from the start, and again a few pages from the end. It is a curious symmetry. Make of it what you will.

The family of vords to which it belongs - its permutations - are native to the Nymph/Star corpus of material (corresponding to dialect B.) Qokal and qotal appear mostly clustered in the nymph and star texts. Qofal does not appear at all. It is the same pattern if we remove the q- and look at other permitted permutations. Yet this permutation - qopal - stands like bookends at either end of the manuscript. Page 3r is classified as dialect A and page 112r as dialect B. So we can say: qopal is a vord in a dialect B family which, on page 3r, appears shared in the dialect A lexicon.

While the manuscript has been shuffled somewhat during its history, the start and finish appear to be intact and the early and last pages in order. This qopal configuration is thus likely to have been there in the original work. (Unless, of course, it made further appearances on pages now lost.) 

I wonder if other vords or textual phenomena appear equidistant from the start and end of the manuscript? That would be fun. Like Dylan Thomas' Prologue to his collected poems.

R. B.