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Gallows distribution

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• Gallows distribution

• Gallows distribution

  davidjackson > 16-08-2017, 09:28 PM

  Can anyone out there confirm or deny this?
  
  Stolfi mentions in a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that he found the following gallows distribution:
  
  
  

  Quote: I just noticed a curious coincidence:
  >
  >   total *occurrences* of words (tokens) with
  >    
  >      0 gallows .... 17363  (49.4%)
  >      1 gallows .... 17443  (49.6%)
  >      2 gallows ....   323   (0.9%)
  >      3 gallows ....     3
  > Many (if not all) of the 2- and 3-gallows words are probably due to
  > omission of word spaces by the transcribers. Other data errors may
  > have injected a few percent of noise in these figures.
  >
  > Still, the coincidence is intriguing. It seems safe to assume that a
  > "correct" Voynichese word can have at most one gallows; so we have
  > almost exact 50-50 split between 0-g and 1-g words.
  
  Even curiouser:
  
                w/o gallows    with gallows
              +--------------+--------------+
  w/o tables   | 8772 (25.2%) | 9016 (25.9%) |
              +--------------+--------------+
  with tables  | 8591 (24.7%) | 8423 (24.2%) |
              +--------------+--------------+
  
  These are counts of tokens (word instances) in the whole majority-vote
  transcription; minus key sequences, labels, unreadable/contentious
  tokens, and the 326 tokens with two or more gallows.
  
  The "gallows" are the EVA letters [ktfp], including any platforms
  ("ct", "cth", "ith") and isolated "e" suffixes ("te", "cthe", etc.).
  
  The "tables" are the letters "ch", "sh", "ee", and any isolated "e"s
  that are not attached to a gallows letter.

  I can't be bothered to dig into this right now - does anybody have the stats to prove or disprove this antique statement?

• RE: Gallows distribution

  -JKP- > 16-08-2017, 09:41 PM

  Quote:...
  > Still, the coincidence is intriguing. It seems safe to assume that a
  > "correct" Voynichese word can have at most one gallows; so we have
  > almost exact 50-50 split between 0-g and 1-g words.
  
  ...

  
  
  I can't give examples while I'm working, but I would strongly disagree with this statement.
  
  Voynichese tokens can certainly have more than one gallows and incidences of those with more than one are not transcription errors. I also believe that combination gallows (which are done in a very systematic way) may be a "shorthand" way of combining two gallows into one.

• RE: Gallows distribution

  Emma May Smith > 16-08-2017, 10:23 PM

  I think Stolfi's definition of 'gallows' and 'tables' is not typical or useful beyond his research at the time. They are specific groupings related to the paradigm he was working on. He mentions later in the same message that different figures could be obtained were the groups to be defined differently.

• RE: Gallows distribution

  Anton > 17-08-2017, 01:40 AM

  I recall that the question was discussed somewhere in the forum (should check the main gallows thread). I agree with JKP - there definitely are vords with more than one gallows. Vords exhibiting t coverage would also count for 2 gallows in transcriptions, but I don't mean them.

• RE: Gallows distribution

  MarcoP > 18-08-2017, 03:11 PM

  I computed some numbers that are certainly different from what Stolfi intended: not all his definitions are clear to me.
  I considered all the words in Takahashi's transcription (labels included).
  
  I counted as a table all sh,ch,e sequences: I tried excluding those adjacent to gallows, but this produces much lower numbers for "words with tables".
  The four sets described by Stolfi have similar numbers, but in Currier A gallows words are less common than words with no gallows, while in Currier B they are more common (47% Currier A, 53% Currier B).  
  
  In all cases, the presence of tables seems slightly correlated with that of gallows.
  
  

  Code:

  ______________________________ all   CUR.A   CUR.B
(blue)   tables    gallows   12079    3229    7782
(orange) noTables  gallows    7255    2206    4799
(yellow) tables    noGallows  8825    3072    5435
(green)  noTables  noGallows  8946    3069    5692
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