The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

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? 

As I wrote, Rule 1 may not be 100% correct, but I think that inserting a parag break before every such line is the best option.  I believe that not breaking would be more often wrong than right.  But I do not see how we can check this hunch.

The Scribe's decision to use one-leg gallows is not simply "when there is space", because there are such gallows squeezed in text with normal line spacing.  That f on line 15 of page f111v, for example. 

If we stuck to this rule, this would mean some paragraphs consisting only of one line each.

There is nothing wrong with one-line paragraphs.  One should break a parag whenever there is a major shift in the focus of discourse or line of argument.  Publishers don't like short parags because they use more paper, and each additional page means 10,000 additional sheets of paper if they print 20,000 copies. So their editors will tell authors to merge short parags into more meaty ones. 

That applies to vellum too; but the result of that economic pressure usually was that the Scribe would  truncate or abbreviate the end of a paragraph (which may be the function of the -am ending) so as to avoid a last line with only a few words; and then he would cram parags together, with no extra space, using other devices to indicate the break.  Like an ornate letter, a ¶ sign, some one-leg gallows...

By the way, the rules I gave are intended for the Starred Parags section.  Maybe other rules would be more appropriate for other sections

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.

And the SBJ has many one-line entries, too...

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.

Well, unfortunately that is a possibility that we cannot exclude.

It seems clear and logical that the Scribe ignored line breaks in the draft, and inserted line breaks by himself whenever he reached the right margin.  As he would do in his main job of putting to vellum the drafts of letters, contracts, etc. in Latin.

But then, if the last line of a parag in the draft ended at the right margin, the Scribe might not notice the parag break, and copy the next parag as a continuation of the previous one.

As for the am, it may be an abbreviation like "etc." -- which the Scribe was allowed to insert at the end of a parag in place of certain unimportant words in order to avoid a very short final line, but might also have been used by the Author in the draft to avoid repetition or redundant phrases.  

But the am may also be a word of the language that is common at the end of sentences, like the "-ta" or "-desu" of Japanese, the "ist" of German... Since the end of a parag is also the end of a sentence, that would explain why am is common in that position.

In summary, even a simple thing like identifying the paragraphs of the SPS (which, in the SPS=SBJ theory, would correspond to the entries of the SBJ) is a messy task, that at this stage we cannot hope to solve with 100% accuracy and confidence.  Sigh.