Beyond Linguistic Decipherment: A Structural Analysis of the Voynich Manuscript as a Diagrammatic Information System (DIS)

The Voynich Manuscript (Beinecke MS 408) has resisted linguistic decipherment for over a century. This study reframes the manuscript as a Diagrammatic Information System (DIS), a non-linear technical artifact where text operates as modular, position-bound annotation.

A full-manuscript quantitative analysis establishes a robust architectural signature: an extreme, scale-invariant suppression of lexical continuity between segments ($\bar{J} \approx 0.08$). This pattern remains stable across folio types and segmentation strategies, forming a global structural constraint statistically incompatible with medieval prose and poetry (Cohen’s $d > 2.0$).

The signature is further distinguished from randomized text and persists after controlling for formulaic language. The study provides a falsifiable, constraint-based framework for future research, delineating the manuscript's macro-scale architecture independently of linguistic content and remaining compatible with complementary models of local text generation.

Changes in Version 3.0 — January 6th, 2026

1. Methodological Formalization & Reproducibility

• Strict Segmentation Protocols: Introduces explicit procedures for Manuscript Line Segmentation and Fixed-length Segmentation ($N=50$ blocks), ensuring the DIS signature is analyzed across multiple scales.

• Tokenization Standards: Specification of space-delimited units using diplomatic transcriptions, with standardized lowercasing and no lemmatization to ensure experiment replicability.

• Exclusion Criteria: Formal definition of text isolation (excluding marginalia and labels) to measure the architectural properties of "continuous" text blocks.

2. Enhanced Comparative Controls

• Scale-Invariance Analysis: Demonstrates that while natural language (Latin/Italian) shows significant scale sensitivity, MS 408 maintains a stable, low Jaccard index ($\bar{J} \approx 0.08$) regardless of segment length.

• Control for Formulaic Language: Inclusion of "formula-stripped" Latin baselines to confirm that the manuscript's lexical independence is not a byproduct of missing common technical terms.

• Randomization Baseline: Comparison against globally shuffled corpora to distinguish the manuscript's structural modularity from purely stochastic or randomized word distributions.

3. Theoretical Refinement

• Defining the DIS Signature: Establishes the systematic and persistent inter-segment lexical independence as the primary quantitative hallmark of a diagrammatically anchored system.

• Structural Envelope: Positions the DIS as a global architectural constraint that describes the manuscript's organization specifically at the manuscript-wide (macro) level, thereby providing a boundary condition for any local generative mechanism.