22-04-2019, 08:03 PM
Rene and nablator, thank you very much for the data analysis that you present here. I appreciate it very much.
Out of curiosity, let me raise a different question: Just today, I was looking at a set of data that pointed in a somewhat different direction from my own current hypothesis, but I found it interesting nonetheless. Of course I do not want to ignore or reject data that fails to confirm my hypothesis, nor do I want to work only with particular pieces of data that happen to support my hypothesis. I am happy to make revisions and alternations to my hypothesis, if that is the direction that the data point toward.
I was studying word types that begin with [fch]. I only considered word types with no other [p] or [f] in them, so that we may consider only one possible substitution rather than dealing with the complication of another possible substitution in the same word. Also, I did not include words that begin a paragraph, because a paragraph-initial [f] may be merely a pilcrow, not an actual letter representing a sound.
I find 30 such word types with initial [fch]. Now I did find 19 of them with doublets with initial [dch], which I do consider a fairly high number, considering that [dch] is not a very common sequence as a proportion of all occurrences of [d] in the MS. I found more doublets of initial [fch] with [dch], than I did of initial [fch] with [kch] or [lch]. Since in general [kch] and [lch] are more frequent than [dch], this seems significant to me.
However, I must admit I found an even better match too: 26 of the 30 word types with initial [fch], have a doublet with initial [sh]. So it seems to me that this is another hypothesis worth investigating further, although it does not confirm my own theory in its current form. Of course [sh] is a complicated character, since it has multiple forms (the shapes of its top loop) that may or may not represent the same or different characters, letters, or sounds. This complication makes the analysis of data with the character [sh] particularly difficult, it seems to me.
Geoffrey
Out of curiosity, let me raise a different question: Just today, I was looking at a set of data that pointed in a somewhat different direction from my own current hypothesis, but I found it interesting nonetheless. Of course I do not want to ignore or reject data that fails to confirm my hypothesis, nor do I want to work only with particular pieces of data that happen to support my hypothesis. I am happy to make revisions and alternations to my hypothesis, if that is the direction that the data point toward.
I was studying word types that begin with [fch]. I only considered word types with no other [p] or [f] in them, so that we may consider only one possible substitution rather than dealing with the complication of another possible substitution in the same word. Also, I did not include words that begin a paragraph, because a paragraph-initial [f] may be merely a pilcrow, not an actual letter representing a sound.
I find 30 such word types with initial [fch]. Now I did find 19 of them with doublets with initial [dch], which I do consider a fairly high number, considering that [dch] is not a very common sequence as a proportion of all occurrences of [d] in the MS. I found more doublets of initial [fch] with [dch], than I did of initial [fch] with [kch] or [lch]. Since in general [kch] and [lch] are more frequent than [dch], this seems significant to me.
However, I must admit I found an even better match too: 26 of the 30 word types with initial [fch], have a doublet with initial [sh]. So it seems to me that this is another hypothesis worth investigating further, although it does not confirm my own theory in its current form. Of course [sh] is a complicated character, since it has multiple forms (the shapes of its top loop) that may or may not represent the same or different characters, letters, or sounds. This complication makes the analysis of data with the character [sh] particularly difficult, it seems to me.
Geoffrey