A key to understand the VMS

[Sam G]

I understand that there are lots of similar words, but that does not mean that the words are meaningless.  I also don't see how we get from the rules you have proposed to a complete text generation method or how such a hypothetical method would explain the frequencies with which the different words occur.

To me, many of these patterns look grammatical.  For instance, it seems clear that okaiin is related to otaiin, okol to otol, etc., and then for some reason relating to the purpose of these words, the k-form calls for the q-prefix more often than the t-form does.

Like I said above I think it's also important to consider the fact that q is almost non-existent in the labels.  This also seems straightforwardly grammatical: q is something used in writing complete sentences but that is not needed in labeling individual items.

If we assume that the text is gibberish that has been produced by some mechanism, then there would seem to be two basic possibilities for explaining the absence of q in labels:

1) The creator of the text had an explicit rule in his mind not to use q in the labels.

2) The creator of the text did not have such a rule, but instead the absence of q is an unintended consequence of how the gibberish-generating procedure worked.

If the former case, we would have to then ask why the creator of the text would have such a highly specific rule, and what other such rules he might have had.

If the latter case, then surely the absence of q in labels must be an important clue to how the gibberish-generating procedure would have worked, and would impose significant constraints on the possibilities.  In particular, it would seem to be impossible that a word was generated independently of the other words in the context within which it occurs, something that already seems clear based on other considerations.