The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[tavie]

As I posted before, my assumed criteria for identifying a parag break are
1. If the line has one or more one-leg gallows (p or f), it must be the first one of a parag.

Why discard the idea that, if one-leg gallows are used when there is more space, the rare presence of a one-leg gallows in a line not clearly demarcated as Top Row could simply mean the scribe has found enough space? 

Just looking at one-leg gallows as line initials, without even looking at one-leg gallows elsewhere in the line, we can see around five instances of two consecutive lines starting with p in the Balneological section and 1 vertical pair for the Stars section.  If we stuck to this rule, this would mean some paragraphs consisting only of one line each. 

(I would also make a similar argument for your final m point below:  there are at least 50 pairs of consecutive lines in Stars that end in final m).  

2.  If the line ends well before the right margin, it must be the last one of a parag. 

Fair enough.  That seems to me the most solid way of identifying a paragraph break, more solid than simply the presence of ornate gallows.

3.  If the line ends in -m or -g, its likely to be the last one of a paragraph. 

I don't follow this.  If I am understanding this right, you are saying that the scribe hasn't faithfully replicated all the author's paragraph breaks, and so there are hidden paragraph breaks in the text:  lines that we currently think of as mid-paragraph but are actually paragraph ends.  And a big clue to identifying concealed paragraph ends is if it ends in final m.  Is that right?

But if paragraph ends - whether concealed or clearly demarcated - are likely to end in final m, then we would expect to see the clearly demarcated paragraph ends to be overwhelmingly final m. 

But we don't see that.  Line end words that appear as clearly demarcated paragraph ends are often different from the line end words above them in the paragraph. In the Stars section, final m is woefully underrepresented at these positions in comparison to the line ends above them.  This would imply the opposite to your rule.

(As a side note, the different behaviour of paragraph end words is an argument to me in support of abbreviation at line ends, although not proof).