Dataset Information

Keywords and Co-Occurrence Patterns in the Voynich Manuscript: An Information-Theoretic Analysis.

ABSTRACT: The Voynich manuscript has remained so far as a mystery for linguists and cryptologists. While the text written on medieval parchment -using an unknown script system- shows basic statistical patterns that bear resemblance to those from real languages, there are features that suggested to some researches that the manuscript was a forgery intended as a hoax. Here we analyse the long-range structure of the manuscript using methods from information theory. We show that the Voynich manuscript presents a complex organization in the distribution of words that is compatible with those found in real language sequences. We are also able to extract some of the most significant semantic word-networks in the text. These results together with some previously known statistical features of the Voynich manuscript, give support to the presence of a genuine message inside the book.

SUBMITTER: Montemurro MA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3689824 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Keywords and Co-Occurrence Patterns in the Voynich Manuscript: An Information-Theoretic Analysis.

Montemurro Marcelo A MA Zanette Damián H DH

PloS one 20130621 6

The Voynich manuscript has remained so far as a mystery for linguists and cryptologists. While the text written on medieval parchment -using an unknown script system- shows basic statistical patterns that bear resemblance to those from real languages, there are features that suggested to some researches that the manuscript was a forgery intended as a hoax. Here we analyse the long-range structure of the manuscript using methods from information theory. We show that the Voynich manuscript present ...[more]

PMID: 23805215

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Dataset Information

Keywords and Co-Occurrence Patterns in the Voynich Manuscript: An Information-Theoretic Analysis.

Publications

Keywords and Co-Occurrence Patterns in the Voynich Manuscript: An Information-Theoretic Analysis.

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