To recap: the Voynich text is, I maintain, extrapolated from two paradigmatic words (configurations of glyphs), QOKEEDY and CHOLDAIIN.
But these verbum potentiae are, in turn, developments from even more basic and primitive models. The primitive paradigms.
In recent posts I have been exploring QOKEEDY with this in view. Of the two paradigms it is the one that contains a gallows glyph and so the study of this paradigm, QOKEEDY, will concern these mysterious glyphs.
In the post prior to this I sketched how the [k] in QOKEEDY is, in fact, a transformation of [t] in the more primitive paradigm. More exactly, [t] becomes [k] when [q] appears at the head of the paradigm. In simple terms, OT becomes QOK.
What is happening, I propose, is that the [q] was a part of [t], but has been separated and placed at the start of the word. The [t], without [q], becomes [k]. It can be seen visually.
Perhaps this reveals a deeper process? Perhaps we need to go further?
What we are doing is deconstructing QOKEEDY. How was this paradigmatic word made? It has been created as a paradigm, a model, for the generation of the text. What are its roots?
The separation of [q] from [k] might suggest a deeper process, in which case I must revise how I see the primitive paradigm.
Because there are the other gallows glyphs to consider in this paradigm. Where do they come from? If [k] comes from [t] by separating [q], what of the two other gallows glyphs?
Here, let us notice that the two other gallows glyphs [f] and [p] – relatively rare in the text – contain the form of the glyph [d].
[p], in fact, is a combination of [q] and [d]. If we separate the [q] in this case, we have [f]. That is:
Just as [k] is [t] without the [q], so [f] is [p] without the [q].
But in both cases, [p] and [f], we have the form of the glyph [d] raised, as it were, on the vertical line of the gallows glyph. They are the glyph [d] on stilts.
So the process by which [q] separates from the gallows glyphs is more extensive, and it involves [d].
The implications for our paradigm are that this explains the glyph [d]. It also appears in the paradigm when [q] takes its position word-initial.
Looking further, the primitive paradigm that emerges is:
OTOOPO
(Noticing again that this is palindromic.)
The [e] and the [d] in QOKEEDY are not primitive. They are modifications.
To give a full account of the transformations:
When [q] is separated from OTOOPO:
*[q] is affixed to the [o] at the beginning
*[t] changes into [k]
*the final [o] becomes [y]
But also:
*[p] becomes [d]
*the other [oo] become [ee].
Again: we can follow these changes visually. It is as of the [d] drops down into place when the elevated glyph [q] is taken from it as support.
At the same time, the [o] is cut in half and becomes [e].
Clearly, the glyph [q] is the key to these transformations. In the primitive paradigm [q] is embedded in the gallows glyphs. When it is separated the glyphs transform and QOKEEDY is born.
The realisation that follows from this is that the primitive paradigm is really just a series of the glyph [o] interspersed with the gallows glyphs. But the gallows glyphs are, as it were, the glyph [o] on stilts, an elevating vertical.
Reduced to its most radical form, the primitive paradigm is:
ooooooooo
This is the text at its very deepest levels. What are the gallows? They are a supercript form of the glyph [o].
We are back to this series of glyph [o] which I have looked at in a previous post, exploring the idea of a fluvial text.
* * *
It would be remiss at this point not to mention that one of our prime suspects, Giovanni Fontana – the municipal physician of Udine - created a cipher of circles (the [o] glyph).
R.B.
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