A Glyph Is Not a Letter, a Token Is Not a Word, a Space Is Not a Space: What the Units of Voynichese Are Not

arXiv:2608.17096v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The Voynich manuscript (Beinecke MS 408) is usually analysed on three unstated assumptions: that its glyphs are letters, that the strings between blanks are words, and that every blank is a word space. We test all three against the Zandbergen-Landini transliteration with matched prose, cipher, and pseudo-text controls and quire-level resampling. None holds, and the failures share a shape: the order in Voynichese sits at the edges of tokens and at g...