Structural patterns in the VMS & Evaluating the Tironian shorthand hypothesis

[CorwinFr]

The pharmaceutical section is tagged $I=P. Folios 103-116 are starred paragraphs a.k.a. recipes tagged $I=S in IVTFF.

Thank you for the correction, I was using section labels from my own parsed JSON, not the IVTFF tags directly. I'll align my terminology. The 286 blocks I count are the starred paragraphs ($I=S) across f103r-f116v.

This is precisely the pattern that one expects if each parag of the Herbal section is about a different plant, and starts with the plant's name.  Many names will be just one word long, and generally will not be mentioned anywhere else in that herbal.  Or in an treatise of anatomy.  or in astrological charts.

Some plant names will be two words or more, and then two such names may begin with the same word.

Good challenge Stolfi. I ran a null test: 500 random sets of VMS words with the same length distribution as the herbal roots, checked substring match rate against pharma openers.


Real herbal roots: 55%. Random words of same lengths: 25% mean. p = 0.004.