22-09-2025, 09:40 PM
I’m not using this topic automation to find parts of speech (verbs, nouns, adjectives). The goal is to group words into “topics,” even if we don’t know what the words mean. So far it’s interesting that the model finds stable topic structure, and that these topics line up with section, language, and scribal hands. In my last post I tried to reduce the influence of style and language, and the topics still show up, and they’re still bounded by section.
Now I’ve run into a different issue. I’m drilling down by section, starting with Herbal, by filtering to those paragraphs only. Inside Herbal I expected at least a couple of thematic clusters (think Culpeper-style: when to harvest, flowering stages, preparations, etc.). Instead, the splits I’m getting are almost entirely language A vs B, with little evidence of cross-language themes. That’s surprising. Herbal is big enough that, ideally, we should see some topic diversity across languages, but we don't; the fact that I’m mostly seeing language separation makes me wonder why...
Now I’ve run into a different issue. I’m drilling down by section, starting with Herbal, by filtering to those paragraphs only. Inside Herbal I expected at least a couple of thematic clusters (think Culpeper-style: when to harvest, flowering stages, preparations, etc.). Instead, the splits I’m getting are almost entirely language A vs B, with little evidence of cross-language themes. That’s surprising. Herbal is big enough that, ideally, we should see some topic diversity across languages, but we don't; the fact that I’m mostly seeing language separation makes me wonder why...