[split] What can the structural peculiarities of the VMS tell us about the nature of the underlying text

[dashstofsk]

initial d word types are more common the closer you get to Line End

For observations like this I find it helpful to have plots of the actual variability. In Herbal A1 pages ( quires 1 to 7 ) words starting  d become more frequent towards the end. But otherwise not in all the sections of the manuscript. In quire 20 they are high at the line start and are then level. Quire 13 starts high, then falls, then rises.

   
   
   

Similarly, many other line anomalies are not all uniform throughout the manuscript, but seem to be different in different sections.