RE: f and p appear predominantly in the first lines of paragraphs
tavie > 16 minutes ago
You already know ad nauseam my three main opinions on this, Jorge, so I'll just put it for anyone who doesn't know:
1. /k/ and /t/ do not always behave alike. In the Stars section ("Scribe 3"), while /k/ underperforms extremely in top lines relative to lower lines, /t/ seems to overperform. It acts more akin to /p/ and /f/ there, rather than /k/. So I'd be cautious about merging the glyphs into a binary distinction of the /k/ and /t/ group vs the /p/ and /f/ group.
2. There's no easy substitution between the embellished and non-embellished the gallows when you look at the rest of the word. In Stars, /pch/ is an extremely common gallows cluster in the headline, while /ke/ - in particular /kee/ - is an extremely common cluster in the lower lines that is greatly underrepresented in the top lines. If we say /p/ is an embellishment of /k/, where are the /pe/ words? If we say /p/ is an embellished ligature of /ke/, then that would make /pch/ the embellished equivalent of /kech/, which is not common in the lower lines. Etc etc.
(NB - the gallows mismatch is less of a problem for Scribe 1 although only in Herbal A, where /kch/ is more common in the lower lines than /ke/ anyway.).
3. I can imagine there might be some difference in word choice in the top lines and that this would cause some degree of distortion in the stats. But I struggle to believe it could be a decisive explanation, given the size of the /p/ dominance, and the behaviour of /ch/ suddenly switching from being word-initial to mainly word-middle, and the increase in /sh/, etc. There could be a language change, e.g. like a herbal might start with Latin names and then move onto describing the herb in the vernacular, but we see this across the different sections, and we also have to bear in mind similarly distinct behaviour at Line Start (including /ch/ becoming word-middle there as well).