16-04-2026, 09:09 AM
Jorge, I get your idea, but I changed a bit the way to test it. I understand your hypothesis as the scribe compressing words when approaching the end of the line, for example with alternations like iin → m.
What I first did was to look at the structure before the final position. Instead of focusing only on the last word, I measured a "line-final-likeness" score for each token depending on its distance to the end of the line. There is a clear progression. In several sections, especially Herbal and Biological, tokens become increasingly end-like as we approach the line ending. So the effect is not just at the last word, it builds up gradually. These end-like tokens tend to belong to specific families and shapes that are well known at line ends in EVA, for example patterns like -dy, -y, -l, -r, or short forms such as dy, dal, lo, which frequently appear in final position and have high end-like scores.
So I thought: maybe the scriba is kind of compressing words when approching to the end of line. So I tested the compression idea directly. If the scribe is compressing, we should see that these end-like tokens correspond more often to longer interior forms, for example via prefix matches or small edit distance. I compared real line-final tokens with matched interior controls and checked several criteria (longer prefix matches, Levenshtein neighbors, subsequences).
The result is negative. Final tokens do not show an excess of longer expandable forms. If anything, they show slightly fewer such relations than the controls.
So the global effect does not seem to be driven by a general compression mechanism. It looks more like a positional preference, where certain variants or families, such as dy, dal, lo, or -dy endings, are increasingly favored as the line end approaches.
What I first did was to look at the structure before the final position. Instead of focusing only on the last word, I measured a "line-final-likeness" score for each token depending on its distance to the end of the line. There is a clear progression. In several sections, especially Herbal and Biological, tokens become increasingly end-like as we approach the line ending. So the effect is not just at the last word, it builds up gradually. These end-like tokens tend to belong to specific families and shapes that are well known at line ends in EVA, for example patterns like -dy, -y, -l, -r, or short forms such as dy, dal, lo, which frequently appear in final position and have high end-like scores.
So I thought: maybe the scriba is kind of compressing words when approching to the end of line. So I tested the compression idea directly. If the scribe is compressing, we should see that these end-like tokens correspond more often to longer interior forms, for example via prefix matches or small edit distance. I compared real line-final tokens with matched interior controls and checked several criteria (longer prefix matches, Levenshtein neighbors, subsequences).
The result is negative. Final tokens do not show an excess of longer expandable forms. If anything, they show slightly fewer such relations than the controls.
So the global effect does not seem to be driven by a general compression mechanism. It looks more like a positional preference, where certain variants or families, such as dy, dal, lo, or -dy endings, are increasingly favored as the line end approaches.