Title |
Keywords and Co-Occurrence Patterns in the Voynich Manuscript: An Information-Theoretic Analysis
|
---|---|
Published in |
PLOS ONE, June 2013
|
DOI | 10.1371/journal.pone.0066344 |
Pubmed ID | |
Authors |
Marcelo A. Montemurro, Damián H. Zanette |
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. |
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Scientists | 20 | 15% |
Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 6 | 4% |
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Mendeley readers
Geographical breakdown
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Brazil | 2 | 2% |
Russia | 2 | 2% |
United States | 2 | 2% |
Belarus | 1 | 1% |
France | 1 | 1% |
Luxembourg | 1 | 1% |
Unknown | 74 | 81% |
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Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
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Researcher | 20 | 22% |
Student > Ph. D. Student | 16 | 18% |
Student > Master | 12 | 13% |
Other | 7 | 8% |
Professor | 6 | 7% |
Other | 22 | 24% |
Unknown | 8 | 9% |
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Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 14 | 15% |
Physics and Astronomy | 12 | 13% |
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Other | 24 | 26% |
Unknown | 12 | 13% |