Wouldn't it be more productive to pick apart the study itself, rather than Stolfi's post hoc backstory? After all, he arrived at the East Asian / Chinese Origin Theory by studying the VMS corpus and its statistics. His backstory about a Retracer, an Author, etc. is just a putative tale, guesswork made after-the-fact, not the backbone of his work.
@Jorge_Stolfi
Have you made any attempts to match 治 (zhì) -- or whatever token is most common after 主 (zhû) -- with vords after daiin?
You mention spelling variations could be at play in the VMS, but is there a 2-vord digram family that could tentatively match 治主 in the Shennong Bencaojin? Doesn't the VMS display greater unpredictability in terms of the following word after daiin?
Also, since you are making the case of possibly phonetic rendition, and surely have given thought to this beforehand:
- Should dan, dain, daiiin to be homophones/allophones of zhì to some extent?
- What do you make of triple reduplicated daiin on f89r2 (picture below)?
Although not a partisan of East Asian Origin Theory personally, thank you for putting in the work and publishing your findings!
@Jorge_Stolfi
Have you made any attempts to match 治 (zhì) -- or whatever token is most common after 主 (zhû) -- with vords after daiin?
You mention spelling variations could be at play in the VMS, but is there a 2-vord digram family that could tentatively match 治主 in the Shennong Bencaojin? Doesn't the VMS display greater unpredictability in terms of the following word after daiin?
Also, since you are making the case of possibly phonetic rendition, and surely have given thought to this beforehand:
- Should dan, dain, daiiin to be homophones/allophones of zhì to some extent?
- What do you make of triple reduplicated daiin on f89r2 (picture below)?
Although not a partisan of East Asian Origin Theory personally, thank you for putting in the work and publishing your findings!