A Candidate Root-Proximity Marker in Herbal Folio Text: Preliminary Statistical Evidence for the Root Morpheme "ain"

Description Core Focus: This research note investigates a spatial-textual hypothesis by testing whether the root morpheme "ain" shows a statistically significant association with physical proximity to root illustrations in herbal folios of the Voynich manuscript. Key Findings: Text zone-mapping across five folios reveals that the root morpheme "ain" occurs at 5.9% in root-adjacent text—approximately 2.6 times its herbal-wide baseline rate and about 3 standard deviations above baseline—surviving rigorous checks against a large-sample reference point. A second candidate ("eey") failed the large-sample baseline test and was attributed to small-sample noise. Methodological Significance: While identifying a concrete statistical association between the morpheme and its physical position on the page, the study notes limitations in sample size and visual classification, emphasizing that the result is preliminary and intended to motivate further data collection rather than establish a confirmed semantic mechanism.