04-06-2026, 02:39 PM
There doesn't seem to be anything much odd about rare gallows words.
If you look at my matrices of gallows words for language B that I presented some time ago,
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you will see many rare gallows words. These particular words are rare simply because they are formed either with an infrequent prefix or an infrequent suffix. For example lkchdy occurs 5 times in the language B pages and this is about the expected number based on the frequencies of the l prefix and the chdy suffix.
Likewise ytey, 5 occurrences.
And if you look at the prefixes and suffices of rare gallow words ( see attached, for language B and quire 13 ) you will see that the top ones are very much the same as for all gallows words ( see attached also ).
So Gallows words, both rare and frequent, seem to have a regular construction. The majority of the rare ones look normal, have also got either a regular prefix or a regular suffix. And it is just a matter of luck if one turns out to be rare.
But also rare words ( 2 to 10 occurrences ) make up ~20-25% of the total number of words. I can't quite see how you are going to be able to obtain any better conclusions about the manuscript just from the minority words and by ignoring the majority in the text.
If you look at my matrices of gallows words for language B that I presented some time ago,
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
you will see many rare gallows words. These particular words are rare simply because they are formed either with an infrequent prefix or an infrequent suffix. For example lkchdy occurs 5 times in the language B pages and this is about the expected number based on the frequencies of the l prefix and the chdy suffix.
Likewise ytey, 5 occurrences.
And if you look at the prefixes and suffices of rare gallow words ( see attached, for language B and quire 13 ) you will see that the top ones are very much the same as for all gallows words ( see attached also ).
So Gallows words, both rare and frequent, seem to have a regular construction. The majority of the rare ones look normal, have also got either a regular prefix or a regular suffix. And it is just a matter of luck if one turns out to be rare.
But also rare words ( 2 to 10 occurrences ) make up ~20-25% of the total number of words. I can't quite see how you are going to be able to obtain any better conclusions about the manuscript just from the minority words and by ignoring the majority in the text.