[Blog Post] Peter Bakker on the VMS

[ReneZ]

Hi Marco,

I have been (as so often) a bit too short and succinct, in order to make my views clear.

Here are a few assorted comments:

- I don't think that the Timm (and Schinner) approach really explains the repetitions of high-frequency words. The method is basically arbitrary, so it is suggested that the person executing it would occasionally just (arbitrarily) repeat the very last word he had just written several times. This is not really a good explanation. It is only something that cannot be excluded.

- The point about line breaks is related to the various 'vague' observations that the line is a functional unit one way or another. Nobody knows exactly how. However, there appear to be special rules for first and last words in lines. This means that (or could mean that) if the source text has normal repeating sequences, these could be interrupted because there are special rules to be applied to line breaks. I consider that the lack of repeating sequences that cross line breaks is a (very) mild confirmation of that possibility. Something that really requires more study.

- With respect to:

The different dialects mentioned by Nick are even more direct evidence that the same plain-text word could be expressed in more than one way (according to the different sections).

, I hate to contradict Nick (no, just kidding :-) ) but this is a hypothesis, and I would not count it as evidence

I am getting more and more careful and skeptical with age :-)