23-04-2019, 12:47 PM
Rene, thank you again for doing and posting this analysis. I appreciate it very much.
I still have some comments and observations:
Many of these words may simply be hapax legomena. The longer and less typical the word, the more likely that this could be the case. In this case, we may not find the alternate form with the [d] substitution, simply because the word type was not used again in the MS at all.
About [dd], it would be fairly simple to propose a rule whereby in cases of [d] substitution producing [dd], the second [d] was simply not written.
It is not just the number of cases of [p]/[f] ~ [d] alternation that is striking to me, it is also the examples of long and/or atypical words, which one would not expect to have a "rhyming" word with [d], which nevertheless show this alternation. For example:
[shckhefy] / [shckhedy]
[chepchefy] / [chepchedy]
[qopchcfhy] / [qopchdy]
[pcheocfhy] / [pcheody]
[ckhcfhhy] / [ckhdy]
It is the quality of the words, not just the quantity of them, that is striking to me. nablator's glyph substitution table posted above is valuable and relevant, certainly. But I would like to see such an analysis, for example, that only includes occurrences in which at least one of the two words in the substitution/alternation is a hapax legomenon. It should be much less likely for a hapax legomenon to have a "rhyming" word with a single glyph alternation purely by chance or coincidence, as opposed to more frequent words, for which the "rhyming" words should be much more likely.
In short, I think 21 out of 86 words with a particular alternation may be a significant amount, when the [p] / [f] forms of these words are mainly hapax legomena.
Geoffrey
I still have some comments and observations:
Many of these words may simply be hapax legomena. The longer and less typical the word, the more likely that this could be the case. In this case, we may not find the alternate form with the [d] substitution, simply because the word type was not used again in the MS at all.
About [dd], it would be fairly simple to propose a rule whereby in cases of [d] substitution producing [dd], the second [d] was simply not written.
It is not just the number of cases of [p]/[f] ~ [d] alternation that is striking to me, it is also the examples of long and/or atypical words, which one would not expect to have a "rhyming" word with [d], which nevertheless show this alternation. For example:
[shckhefy] / [shckhedy]
[chepchefy] / [chepchedy]
[qopchcfhy] / [qopchdy]
[pcheocfhy] / [pcheody]
[ckhcfhhy] / [ckhdy]
It is the quality of the words, not just the quantity of them, that is striking to me. nablator's glyph substitution table posted above is valuable and relevant, certainly. But I would like to see such an analysis, for example, that only includes occurrences in which at least one of the two words in the substitution/alternation is a hapax legomenon. It should be much less likely for a hapax legomenon to have a "rhyming" word with a single glyph alternation purely by chance or coincidence, as opposed to more frequent words, for which the "rhyming" words should be much more likely.
In short, I think 21 out of 86 words with a particular alternation may be a significant amount, when the [p] / [f] forms of these words are mainly hapax legomena.
Geoffrey