Thoughts on [m, g] as [in, ain]? (Stolfi)

[pfeaster]

It looks like Stolfi leaned towards seeing EVA-m and g as shortened versions of in-clusters. To me this feels right intuitively. But I wonder, has anyone looked into this further? Are there any objections or better solutions?

This seems to be tied specifically to an attempt to explain characters that appear mostly at the ends of lines in terms of abbreviations resorted to for lack of space.  That is, there doesn't seem to be any reason to assume [m] and [g] might be abbreviations apart from their unusual distribution.

I'm inclined to suspect they aren't abbreviations, on these grounds:

(1) There are few enough graphemes in Voynichese as it is.  Reducing the number yet further feels a bit like a step in the wrong direction.

(2) Many glyphs have stronger or weaker "positional preferences"; [m] and [g] are just a bit more conspicuous about it than some others.  Explaining these two cases as abbreviations wouldn't resolve the broader "positional preference" problem.

(3) It's easy to find [m] and [g] in places where the scribe had plenty of room left in which to write, and [n] in places where space was very tight -- see for example [n] actually overlapping parts of plant illustrations on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and f49v.  If the scribe had the option of writing [m] instead of [iin] (or whatever), why not take it there?

(4) The number of [e]s preceding [g] tops out at the same point as the number preceding [b] and [d]: maximum [eeeg], [eeeb], [eeed].  And as Stolfi observes, there are also plenty of [m]s that are preceded by [i] or [ii].  If [m] and [g] were abbreviations whose purpose was to obviate the need to write out multiple [i]s or [e]s, they must have been employed very inefficiently!