labels as words

[MarcoP]

There are some interesting stats, Marco, and I've certainly never seen labelese so clearly described. Researchers often talk about how it differs and so it's good to see the numbers.

Thank you, Emma! Actually, I understood from these diagrams that I was thinking the whole ms has the statistics that truly belong to the labels. For instance, I somehow thought that o- words were more common than the sum of ch- and sh- words.

I'll add my thoughts, which may duplicate some of yours.

Word starts:

[qo]: it's no surprise to see this at lower levels, as this is the classic mark of labelese.

Yes, this is a true cornerstone

[ch, sh]: the lower levels of these two is interesting, as I can think of two different kinds of word which begin [ch, sh]. Some are short, like [chy] and [sheo], others are long with a gallows, such as [chckhy] and [chety]. I would guess it's the former which is changing the numbers and they're more common. But if so, what do these short words mean? Are they not in the labels because they're grammatical?

I think I will draw another version of the charts using unique words (i.e. counting each word once, not the number of occurrences). The difference could tell us how much the short / high-frequency words impact.

[ot, ok]: the increase in these should be a result of the lower [qo]. I note that for all labels the levels are similar and increase similarly, though for the small plants labels [ot] start much lower and grow much further.

I agree with the idea of a relation with the rarity of qo- in the labels. The strong correlation between initial o- and labels reminds me of the al- definite article in the labels of Arabic manuscripts, as discussed by Stephen Bax (and others, I guess); but of course it might be something entirely different.

[yt, yk, sa, so]: this is the biggest surprise! These are line start patterns, so to see them here is interesting. This is a link between labels and line patterns, though it's hard to see immediately how.

I hadn't thought of line start patterns. That's an excellent observation!

Word ends:
...
[ly, ry]: it might seem that these endings account for the lower [ol, or] by the addition of [y], but I think more of these are [aly, ary].

I confirm these labels are about 60% [-aly, -ary], 30% [-oly, -ory], 10% other characters.