The Linguistics of the Voynich Manuscript
Claire Bowern, Luke Lindemann
September 2020
 

The Voynich Manuscript is a 15th Century illustrated cipher manuscript. In this overview of recent approaches to the Voynich manuscript, we summarize and evaluate current work on the language that underlies this document. We provide arguments for treating the document as natural language (rather than a medieval hoax) and show how we can make statistical arguments about the phonology, morphology, and structure of the document, even though the contents remain undecipherable. [updated Sept 8 to fix typos and font problem]
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/005415
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: forthcoming, Annual Review of Linguistics
keywords: ciphers, unknown languages, documentation, voynich manuscript, morphology, orthography, morphology, syntax, phonology
previous versions: v1 [September 2020]
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