Structural patterns in the VMS & Evaluating the Tironian shorthand hypothesis

[CorwinFr]

This happens systematically. **53% of pharma recipe openers** (154 out of 286) contain a herbal plant root as a substring.

What is a pharma recipe opener? A line? If labels are not counted there are 231 lines in the "pharma" section.

Good catch, let me be precise.

On "unique": 132 out of 143 herbal folios (92%) have a distinct first word. Five words are shared by 2-3 folios:

First word Folios Count
pchor f19r, f21r, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 3
tshor f15r, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 2
kooiin f29v, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 2
cho f42r, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 2
podaiin f54r, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 2

So 11 folios share a first word with at least one other folio. "Unique" was an overstatement, 92% distinct is the correct number.

The shared cases are interesting in themselves: a pragmatic pharmacist might use the same code for plants he considers interchangeable (f54r and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. are consecutive folios, possibly variants of the same plant; You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. are recto/verso of the same leaf).

On "pharma recipe opener": I count text blocks, not lines. In the ZL transcription, the pharma section has 286 blocks (starred paragraphs, each typically one recipe) across 1,085 lines. My "53% of 286 openers" means 154 block-initial words contain a herbal root as a substring. If you count 231 lines, that's likely the line count for a subset of the pharma folios, or a different section boundary definition. I used all folios tagged "pharma" in the ZL metadata (f103r through f116v, 24 folios)., f42v
2