Another clear indication of length dependence.
(It just occurred to me: “ain” refers to the entire “aiin” family (not just “ain”), and “edo” refers to the entire ‘e’ family—that is, “ed,” “eod,” etc. and calculated based on Eva ZB, excluding 57v and 116v, and each line containing more than 2 tokens)
Two route diagrams: one for words beginning with “o,” one for words beginning with “qo.”
First observation: After the gallows, the two routes follow almost the same number (yellow circles)
If you compare the values, you can see how close they are; the only outlier is the “t” to “e” family.
These continuation profiles are closer to each other than those of any other pair of units in the system. Whatever the choice between “o” and “qo” signifies, it reveals almost nothing about how the word continues—the word seems to virtually forget its bridge as soon as the gallows is written. (This supports what I wrote in the post above about “qo” and “o.”)
Second observation: “o” has the short endings o-> L = 19.8%, o -> r = 7.2% (ol, or, and related words)—where a word can simply end. This makes sense, of course; since “o” is only one glyph long, it’s needed for short words. “qo” has hardly any to practically no transitions in that direction: (l 4.7%, r 0.6%). Thus, nearly every “qo” word is forced to use the long mechanism.
In short, the choice of this prefix does say something about the length of the word. This fits perfectly into a length-dependent cipher.
(At the same time, this is further evidence that systems based entirely on direct language substitution cannot be correct. As far as I know, this does not exist in any language. It would be interesting to know whether this exists in Chinese, but I’m not familiar enough with the language to say.)
In summary: It is a choice that provides almost no information about what follows, but results in a clear difference in “initial permissions.” “o” is one glyph wide and serves as a bridge to complete short words. “qo” is two glyphs wide, excluded from the short forms, and therefore occurs in longer words: L4–L6 contain 84,8% of all tokens beginning with “qo”,while “o” is distributed more evenly
This is exactly the pattern one would expect if a word’s width matters: The same grammar underlies both bridges, but the one-glyph bridge serves the short words and the two-glyph bridge serves the longer ones. And in precisely such a system, it is possible to determine a word’s length class based on its first pair of glyphs. In all other systems, this is somewhat strange.
(It just occurred to me: “ain” refers to the entire “aiin” family (not just “ain”), and “edo” refers to the entire ‘e’ family—that is, “ed,” “eod,” etc. and calculated based on Eva ZB, excluding 57v and 116v, and each line containing more than 2 tokens)
Two route diagrams: one for words beginning with “o,” one for words beginning with “qo.”
First observation: After the gallows, the two routes follow almost the same number (yellow circles)
If you compare the values, you can see how close they are; the only outlier is the “t” to “e” family.
These continuation profiles are closer to each other than those of any other pair of units in the system. Whatever the choice between “o” and “qo” signifies, it reveals almost nothing about how the word continues—the word seems to virtually forget its bridge as soon as the gallows is written. (This supports what I wrote in the post above about “qo” and “o.”)
Second observation: “o” has the short endings o-> L = 19.8%, o -> r = 7.2% (ol, or, and related words)—where a word can simply end. This makes sense, of course; since “o” is only one glyph long, it’s needed for short words. “qo” has hardly any to practically no transitions in that direction: (l 4.7%, r 0.6%). Thus, nearly every “qo” word is forced to use the long mechanism.
In short, the choice of this prefix does say something about the length of the word. This fits perfectly into a length-dependent cipher.
(At the same time, this is further evidence that systems based entirely on direct language substitution cannot be correct. As far as I know, this does not exist in any language. It would be interesting to know whether this exists in Chinese, but I’m not familiar enough with the language to say.)
In summary: It is a choice that provides almost no information about what follows, but results in a clear difference in “initial permissions.” “o” is one glyph wide and serves as a bridge to complete short words. “qo” is two glyphs wide, excluded from the short forms, and therefore occurs in longer words: L4–L6 contain 84,8% of all tokens beginning with “qo”,while “o” is distributed more evenly
This is exactly the pattern one would expect if a word’s width matters: The same grammar underlies both bridges, but the one-glyph bridge serves the short words and the two-glyph bridge serves the longer ones. And in precisely such a system, it is possible to determine a word’s length class based on its first pair of glyphs. In all other systems, this is somewhat strange.