The Challenge of Analyzing a Dynamic Text

[JoJo_Jost]

One point on this:

The observations on the development of vocabulary in the VMS are real and valuable, but I consider the conclusions drawn from them to be questionable. Having recently studied medieval German manuscripts intensively – Ortloff von Baierland, the Breslau Pharmacopoeia, Admonter Bartholomäus – I have also noticed such deviations within individual texts by individual authors. Spelling changes over the course of a manuscript. The frequency of words shifts dramatically depending on what is being described. The similarity between early and late sections decreases significantly, even in a simple medical text. All this does not require complex systems or even a self-citation process – it is simply what happens when a person writes a long text over weeks or months, possibly copying from different sources, changing topics or gradually changing their writing habits. The assumption that a “static system” should provide identical statistics on every page sets a bar that no real medieval manuscript could reach.