Floating gallows

[MarcoP]

Using Paragraph text from ZL_ivtff_1r.txt, I get higher counts for y[gallows]e: 411 occurrences (probably slightly underestimated).

Occurrences seem to belong to two main families:

• word-initially after a line or image break (e.g. four out of six You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., four out of five You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). 137 occurrences, 33%;
  
• again word-initially, but after an ordinary word break. 226 occurrences, 55%.
  

Much of the remaining 12% can probably be seen as two words joined together e.g. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Unless I miscounted something, about ~90% of word-initial 'y's are of the form y[gallows] and removing the initial y- typically results in a word with a similar number of tokens. Together with the strong preference for occurring after line or image breaks, I think it's possible that the y-gallows pattern belongs to the transformations discussed by Emma and results from prefixing 'y' to a valid word. So, an explanation for why 'ye' is so rare is that it descends from extreme rarity of word-initial 'e'.

EDIT: though it can be seen in Obelus' graph, it is worth noting that all the occurrences of 'y[gallows]e' involve either 'k' or 't': 'yfe' and 'ype' are absent (with a possible non-paragraph exception in <f67v1.21,@Ro> ykeey.cheo.daiin.ypeeeg.oty, but it could well be 'ypcheg').