Vord frequency histogram as an indicator of the text category

[ThomasCoon]

Thanks for the very thorough reply JKP!

Thomas, there are a number of possible interpretations, but it seems to me that the two most likely reasons are:

1. That it's a clue to the encoding mechanism, or
2. that it's a reflection of the content.

That's a great point - It never occurred to me that it could also reflect the content - that's certainly a viable explanation too.

It's not too hard to describe page position, but when you factor in their breakdown components and their relationships to the rest of the manuscript, it becomes a mountain of a project, which is why I haven't finished writing it all up yet.

It seems you have several monolithic projects going on I commend you for always thinking big-picture and comprehensively, even when it's a strenuous road to walk.

As an example, in the large-plants section, the following patterns are evident:

1. Unique Vords have a somewhat regular distribution within the text. They do not tend to fall next to each other.
2. Unique Vords appear more frequently, but not always, at the beginnings of paragraphs. <-- [See point 8.]
3. Unique Vords less commonly fall at the ends of paragraphs than at the beginning (but it does happen).
4. When unique Vords fall at the ends of lines, they are often suffixed by those peculiar constructions that are more frequent at the ends of lines, such as EVA-aj, -oj, or j or EVA-d with straight leg rather than a full figure-8 curve, or those common at the ends of words (e.g., EVA-y, -dy or -ar). <-- [Points worth noting since these are general patterns of the text and apparently not restricted to unique Vords.]
5. Unique Vords are somewhat of the same length as common Vords. In the VMS, vord length is not necessarily an indication of rarity or uniqueness. Sometimes unique vords are short and sometimes common words are long.
6. Most of the time, unique Vords tend to show up about 4 to 9 times per paragraph and are somewhat evenly distributed in the sense of being proportional to the rest of the text. Very short paragraphs will sometimes only have a couple of unique Vords.
7. Unique Vords at the beginnings of paragraphs are often prefaced by gallows characters.
8. Important: unique Vords will often break down into two components that show up elsewhere in the text. These atomic units combine in more than one way (some appear to behave like words, some appear to behave like affixes, frequently suffixes). Some are common vords. <-- [This is also worth noting because it begs the question, "Are they compound words as in natural language, are they structural units as in a synthetic language, or are the spaces contrived?".]
9. When the unique Vord is at the beginning of a paragraph and prefaced by gallows characters, removing the gallows will often result in a common component or a combination of two common components.

Wow - this is very enlightening! Thanks JKP - I definitely agree with points 2, 7 and 8. Anyone who works with the text long enough will notice how odd paragraph-initial words are (especially those weird gallows constructions). Trying to figure out why they are EVA p-initial or f-initial has always been a thorn in my side...

Point #4 is highly intriguing because (please forgive me if I misinterpreted) the elements that normally appear at the end of a line still appear at the end of a line regardless of whether or not the vord is unique - which may be evidence for some paragraph / line structure that is at least partially independent of the words in that line. I'm not saying I'm advocating that theory (I have no idea) but this observation might support it.

1. In medieval herbals, there are frequently lists of plant names in a variety of languages. If the unique Vords in the VMS big-plants section were lists of plant names, and if the VMS text followed conventional patterns, then one would expect a higher proportion of unique Vords and they would probably be closer together, rather than being more evenly distributed. Also, unique Vords are not always at the beginning of paragraphs so, even if one name were listed rather than several, either the name consists of common words (e.g., in English, the components water and lily might show up as a plant name, but also as separate words in other sections) or the text in each section does not follow a rigid model or... the text may have nothing to do with plants (or be meaningless). For the record, ancient and medieval plant names tended to be based on unique words rather than compound words (e.g., afodille, androsaema, corcodrillo, pitythalmos, etc.).
2. As examples of pages that are somewhat (although not greatly) different, Plant 4v and 17r have more end-of-line unique Vords, and 20v has fewer unique vords.
3. Following up Point 9, it's important to consider that the preponderance of unique Vords at the beginning of paragraphs might be an artifact. If it turns out that gallows characters are capitula, markers, or modifiers, and are evaluated separately from the following glyphs, then the following glyphs are often not unique. For example, if you have EVA-Pxxxxx at the beginning of the paragraph and you remove the P, the rest of the vord is often found elsewhere. This lends support to the possibility that gallows-P behaves differently from other glyphs and also that the Vords at the beginnings of paragraphs are not necessarily unique.

All three of these are great points - I definitely agree with #3; that has occurred to me also. And as far as #1, I'm glad you understand the norms of Medieval plant naming, because that fact would've passed over most of our heads