An observation:
All three formats of the text, word, line and paragraph, display initial/final phenomena.
Some glyphs are found at the start or the end of words.
Some glyphs are found at the start or end of lines.
Some glyphs are found at the start or end of paragraphs.
It is notable that this structure extends to all these formats.
It suggests isomorphism – the persistence of structures mapped at different scales.
It might suggest:
A line is a long word.
A paragraph is a long line.
It suggests a series of expanding units each preserving the same structure.
That is, the word is the model for both the line and the paragraph.
All three formats are versions of the same thing, namely a unit of glyphs marked at start and finish.
* * *
Clearly, there are systems of initial and final glyphs in addition to spaces and breaks.
It does not seem that initial and final glyphs are being used to clarify a text that is without clear spacing.
Word breaks can be ambiguous, but for the most part they are clear.
Lines are clearly constituted.
Paragraphs are usually well separated and easily distinguished as units.
Spaces and breaks indicate and define words, lines and paragraphs clearly enough.
So there is no need for such a persistent structure of initial/final markers on those practical grounds.
Yet it is a very conspicuous feature of Voynichese. Not only are words marked initial/final, so too are larger units of text, lines and paragraphs.
Not always, of course, but there is a well-documented phenomenon of glyphs preferring particular initial or final positions within words, lines and paragraphs.
There is no need to rehearse all the instances here. [n] is nearly always word final. [q] is nearly always word initial. [m] is always line final in Currier B. Paragraphs are often marked with initial gallows glyphs which are otherwise redundant (Grove words). And so on.
It is part of a wider phenomenon: glyphs in general are under tight restraints as to where they are positioned. There are glyphs that do not, or rarely, appear initial or final.
In a natural language there might be phonetic reasons for such placements: some sounds do not go smoothly with others.
But Voynichese is far more tightly constrained than natural languages and it is hard to construe important aspects of its behavior as linguistic.
In what language – even if it is recorded phonetically - are words, lines and paragraphs all marked initial and final, in addition to a coherent and effective system of spaces?
What else then?
What model of Voynichese might account for this phenomenon?
If Voynichese is, as I would have it, a cosmological language based upon the cycles of the solar year, and hence zodiacal symbolism (divisions of the ecliptic), then the answer would be: cusps.
A system of initial and final glyphs could mark cusps, the critical points that mark astrological divisions.
If we mark out the zodiacal sign Pisces, we mark the cusp at the beginning, 0º, and at the end, 30º, which is to say 0º Aries.
The ‘sign’ is defined as the interval between two cusps.
Thus, in astrology, cusps mark off meaningful units.
A decanate – a division of the circle by 36 units of ten – is defined by its cusps.
All divisions of the ecliptic, large or small, are defined as the space or interval between two cusps.
(Remember, of course, that these are imaginary divisions of an imaginary circle, but they correspond to celestial realities including, loosely, constellations.)
This is more consistent with the way initial and final glyphs are deployed in the Voynich text.
Moreover, zodiacal symbolism is inherently isomorphic. The same patterns are repeated at different scales.
(A clockface, after all, reduces the twelve signs of the zodiac to divisions of the day, but with the same divisions and patterns.)
Conceivably, this could provide an adequate account of the phenomena encountered in the Voynich text.
At any rate, my investigations (see previous posts) lead me to suspect that this is the most promising non-linguistic model worth exploring.
R.B.
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