k/t gallows reduplication

[pfeaster]

In You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., I presented some statistical evidence that it's more likely overall for a [t] to be followed by another [t] within the next 4-6 glyphs, and for a [k] to be followed by another [k] within the same distance, than it is for a [t] to be followed by a [k] or vice versa.  That also seems consistent with a tendency towards "blocks," for whatever it's worth.

I should qualify this, since it's not quite accurate the way I expressed it here.  What I was trying to study was the effect of one glyph on the probability of another glyph appearing a given number of positions ahead of it in the text, ignoring spaces.  So, for example, I might count how many times the string [kedyqo] occurs, and then multiply that by the proportion of times the string [edyqo] is followed by [k].  My idea was that the result would predict how many tokens of [kedyqok] should occur if the presence of the first [k] has no effect on the probability of the second [k].  I would then compare this prediction against the actual token count of [kedyqok] to see if this sequence is more or less frequent than it "should" be.

Cases in which [k] is followed by another [k], or [t] is followed by another [t], were routinely more frequent than predicted:

k>edyqo>k: 109 actual, 94.09 predicted (~116%)
k>eedyqo>k: 165 actual, 156.84 predicted (~105%)
k>eyqo>k: 32 actual, 27.47 predicted (~116%)
k>eeyqo>k: 109 actual, 92.48 predicted (~118%)
k>edyo>k: 62 actual, 42.03 predicted (~148%)
k>eedyo>k: 41 actual, 37.52 predicted (~109%)
t>edyqo>t: 34 actual, 16.75 predicted (~203%)
t>eedyqo>t: 30 actual, 18.77 predicted (~160%)
t>eyqo>t: 3 actual, 2.87 predicted (~105%)
t>eeyqo>t: 13 actual, 9.14 predicted (~142%)
t>edyo>t: 29 actual, 25.29 predicted (~115%)
t>eedyo>t: 17 actual, 14.56 predicted (~117%)

Cases of alternation between [k] and [t] were routinely less frequent than predicted (although not always; exceptions are marked in boldface):

k>edyqo>t: 19 actual, 29.51 predicted (~64%)
k>eedyqo>t: 45 actual, 53.19 predicted (~85%)
k>eyqo>t: 4 actual, 5.73 predicted (~70%)
k>eeyqo>t: 22 actual, 27.43 predicted (~80%)
k>edyo>t: 35 actual, 42.03 predicted (~83%)
k>eedyo>t: 40 actual, 39.76 predicted (~101%)
t>edyqo>k: 42 actual, 53.40 predicted (~79%)
t>eedyqo>k: 47 actual, 55.35 predicted (~85%)
t>eyqo>k: 15 actual, 13.74 predicted (~109%)
t>eeyqo>k: 28 actual, 30.83 predicted (~91%)
t>edyo>k: 18 actual, 25.29 predicted (~71%)
t>eedyo>k: 13 actual, 13.74 predicted (~95%)

This is a little subtler than what I described hastily from memory -- it's not that [t] is necessarily more likely to be followed by [t] than [k] in terms of raw token counts, but that the probabilities are skewed in favor of a repetition of the same gallows glyph.

I also worked out statistics for all intervening strings of particular lengths ending with [o] (treating [ee] as a single glyph), with [*] indicating one intervening glyph, [**] indicating two intervening glyphs, and so forth.

Overall,

o>k = 30.31%

But: 

t>**o>k = 17.75%; t>***o>k = 24.93%; t>****o>k = 33.04%
k>**o>k = 32.68%; k>***o>k = 39.18%; k>****o>k = 46.81%

Overall, 

o>t = 16.83%

But:

t>**o>t = 29.02%; t>***o>t = 34.03%; t>****o>t = 28.03%
k>**o>t = 19.30%; k>***o>t = 21.86%; k>****o>t = 15.27%

Again, the cases in which the same gallows glyph recurs routinely outperform the cases in which gallows glyphs alternate.