Language A vs B crib?

[julian]

We then compare the distributions: a reasonable speculation is that the most common words in A are the same plaintext as the most common words in B.

That's not that reasonable if you compare text blocks the subject of which is different - like Herbal A with Recipe B. A pure test would be to compare herbal A with herbal B.

In a highly abbreviated "telegraph-style" text (which the VMS probably is), function words may be absent at all.

I don't think there is a Herbal B, otherwise I'd have used that. My notes say Herbal folios are 1-56, 87, 90, and 93 to 96 which doesn't overlap with Language B. Do I have that wrong?

I agree that the inquiry is only meaningful if the plaintext is not odd (like highly abbreviated). For normal plaintext one would expect the most common words to be the same even if the subject matter was different, right?

The fact that the most common words from the Herbal A and Recipes B look similar, I like to think is more than coincidence