# A Generative Grammar Underlying the Voynich Manuscript, the Pastiche Hypothesis: Evidence from Large Language Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.20835 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.20835/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 3 of its 60 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Jul 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Statistical laws in linguistics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.03296/) (2015)
- [Probing the statistical properties of unknown texts: application to the Voynich Manuscript](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1303.0347/) (2013)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Background: The Voynich Manuscript is a fifteenth-century codex written in an unknown script whose content remains undeciphered. Previous studies suggest that its statistical properties resemble those of natural languages, while its illustrations - primarily plants - recall medieval herbals. Methods: We present a multidisciplinary analysis combining probabilistic modeling, phonetic decomposition, rare-event detection, and multimodal image analysis, based on a newly transliterated corpus. Word- and letter-level distributions are modeled using position-dependent probabilistic grammars, while phonetic patterns are compared across Indo-European, Semitic, and Asian languages. Image-text alignment methods based on large language models are applied to identify potential botanical correspondences. Results: The results indicate that Voynich symbols behave as letters rather than syllabic units, while word-length distributions resemble syllabic structures. Phonetic analyses show closer alignment with consonant-heavy languages such as Hebrew or Arabic than with Indo-European languages. Probabilistic modeling reproduces Zipf-like distributions and reveals extremely low probabilities for repeated initial-letter sequences, indicating a structured imitation of natural language. Image analysis suggests strong correspondences between Voynich plant illustrations and those found in Pseudo-Apuleius herbals from the Mediterranean tradition, consistent with an imitation of medieval medicinal books. Perspectives: These findings support the hypothesis that the Voynich Manuscript follows a structured generative system combining linguistic regularities and herbal knowledge, and demonstrate the value of integrating probabilistic and AI-assisted approaches in the analysis of historical manuscripts.