Relations among pattern studies?

[pfeaster]

I feel that ascribing it all to esthetic choice is the least reasonable option. It leaves too much potential insight on the the table.

That said, the main point I wanted to make is that raw token counts are---to a some degree---poor supporting evidence for any theory built around glyphs transition probabilities. If those counts are dependent on spaces and spaces dependent on esthetic sensibility, then we would need that sensibility to be itself statistical robust. Of course, that would not be scientific.

To be clear, I don't mean to ascribe any of this to aesthetic sensibilities.

The hypothesis I'm suggesting is only that "weak" breakpoints reflect a real systemic ambiguity, in each case with a calculable n% probability of being resolved one way or the other.  I believe the observation that [r] followed by [a] has an n% probability of spacing is as statistically defensible -- as far as it goes -- as the observation that [r] has an n% probability of being followed by [a] in the first place.  And generating an unbroken stream of glyphs randomly based on the latter set of probabilities, and then splitting it into pieces randomly based on the former set of probabilities, strikes me as a valid way of simulating the results of those two hypothetical processes interacting.

That said, I agree that the resulting word token counts are more vulnerable to error than other kinds of evidence might be, because they depend on not just one hypothesis, but on two at once -- one about glyph sequencing, another about spacing -- either of which could obviously be wrong even if the other were to be right.