(18-05-2026, 11:03 AM)dashstofsk wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.However the flow of the writing suggests that the writer did not pause after each word to think of what ought to come next. So I am still inclined to believe that the method is more simple, and doesn't involve looking back at previous words.
If you already have an idea for the next word, nothing stops you from just writing it down. For instance, you might have two or three modifications of the current word in mind and write them in sequence without pausing. But when you need a fresh idea, the most efficient method is to look at a word already written. This is the reason D'Imperio (1978) wrote that when faced with producing meaningless "dummy text" to conceal encrypted messages, scribes "would naturally tend to repeat parts of neighboring strings with various small changes and additions" (D'Imperio 1978, p. 118).
The point is that the human mind has the tendency to repeat the same ideas: "It is a dramatic observation that when human subjects are asked to generate random sequences, they normally cannot produce sequences that satisfy accepted criteria for randomness" (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.: Generation of Random Sequences by Human Subjects: Cognitive Operations or Psychophysical Process?) This might be hard to imagine if you need some ideas for a few words. But after writing 100 or more words, it becomes exhausting to keep inventing new words. This is exactly what the Gaskell and Bowern experiment demonstrated — their participants naturally fell into "word repetition or the reuse of prefixes and suffixes" after about 100 words. Therefore you need a method to overcome the tendency to repeat yourself. The simplest method is to look at something already in your field of view and modify it. Not because anyone designed this method — because it's what human cognition defaults to when it runs out of ideas.