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• RE: It is not Chinese

  tavie > Yesterday, 07:59 PM

  (Yesterday, 04:15 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As I posted before, my assumed criteria for identifying a parag break are
  1. If the line has one or more one-leg gallows (p or f), it must be the first one of a parag.

  
  Why discard the idea that, if one-leg gallows are used when there is more space, the rare presence of a one-leg gallows in a line not clearly demarcated as Top Row could simply mean the scribe has found enough space? 
  
  Just looking at one-leg gallows as line initials, without even looking at one-leg gallows elsewhere in the line, we can see around five instances of two consecutive lines starting with p in the Balneological section and 1 vertical pair for the Stars section.  If we stuck to this rule, this would mean some paragraphs consisting only of one line each. 
  
  (I would also make a similar argument for your final m point below:  there are at least 50 pairs of consecutive lines in Stars that end in final m).  
  
  

  (Yesterday, 04:15 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.2.  If the line ends well before the right margin, it must be the last one of a parag. 

  
  Fair enough.  That seems to me the most solid way of identifying a paragraph break, more solid than simply the presence of ornate gallows.
  
  

  (Yesterday, 04:15 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.3.  If the line ends in -m or -g, its likely to be the last one of a paragraph. 

  
  I don't follow this.  If I am understanding this right, you are saying that the scribe hasn't faithfully replicated all the author's paragraph breaks, and so there are hidden paragraph breaks in the text:  lines that we currently think of as mid-paragraph but are actually paragraph ends.  And a big clue to identifying concealed paragraph ends is if it ends in final m.  Is that right?
  
  But if paragraph ends - whether concealed or clearly demarcated - are likely to end in final m, then we would expect to see the clearly demarcated paragraph ends to be overwhelmingly final m. 
  
  But we don't see that.  Line end words that appear as clearly demarcated paragraph ends are often different from the line end words above them in the paragraph. In the Stars section, final m is woefully underrepresented at these positions in comparison to the line ends above them.  This would imply the opposite to your rule.
  
  (As a side note, the different behaviour of paragraph end words is an argument to me in support of abbreviation at line ends, although not proof).

• RE: It is not Chinese

  Jorge_Stolfi > Yesterday, 09:11 PM

  (Yesterday, 07:59 PM)tavie Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Why discard the idea that, if one-leg gallows are used when there is more space, the rare presence of a one-leg gallows in a line not clearly demarcated as Top Row could simply mean the scribe has found enough space? 

  
  As I wrote, Rule 1 may not be 100% correct, but I think that inserting a parag break before every such line is the best option.  I believe that not breaking would be more often wrong than right.  But I do not see how we can check this hunch.
  
  The Scribe's decision to use one-leg gallows is not simply "when there is space", because there are such gallows squeezed in text with normal line spacing.  That f on line 15 of page f111v, for example. 
  
  

  Quote:If we stuck to this rule, this would mean some paragraphs consisting only of one line each.

  
  There is nothing wrong with one-line paragraphs.  One should break a parag whenever there is a major shift in the focus of discourse or line of argument.  Publishers don't like short parags because they use more paper, and each additional page means 10,000 additional sheets of paper if they print 20,000 copies. So their editors will tell authors to merge short parags into more meaty ones. 
  
  That applies to vellum too; but the result of that economic pressure usually was that the Scribe would  truncate or abbreviate the end of a paragraph (which may be the function of the -am ending) so as to avoid a last line with only a few words; and then he would cram parags together, with no extra space, using other devices to indicate the break.  Like an ornate letter, a ¶ sign, some one-leg gallows...
  
  By the way, the rules I gave are intended for the Starred Parags section.  Maybe other rules would be more appropriate for other sections
  
  

  Quote:I would also make a similar argument for your final m point below:  there are at least 50 pairs of consecutive lines in Stars that end in final m.

  
  And the SBJ has many one-line entries, too...
  
  

  Quote:If I am understanding this right, you are saying that the scribe hasn't faithfully replicated all the author's paragraph breaks, and so there are hidden paragraph breaks in the text:  lines that we currently think of as mid-paragraph but are actually paragraph ends.

  
  Well, unfortunately that is a possibility that we cannot exclude.
  
  It seems clear and logical that the Scribe ignored line breaks in the draft, and inserted line breaks by himself whenever he reached the right margin.  As he would do in his main job of putting to vellum the drafts of letters, contracts, etc. in Latin.
  
  But then, if the last line of a parag in the draft ended at the right margin, the Scribe might not notice the parag break, and copy the next parag as a continuation of the previous one.
  
  As for the am, it may be an abbreviation like "etc." -- which the Scribe was allowed to insert at the end of a parag in place of certain unimportant words in order to avoid a very short final line, but might also have been used by the Author in the draft to avoid repetition or redundant phrases.  
  
  But the am may also be a word of the language that is common at the end of sentences, like the "-ta" or "-desu" of Japanese, the "ist" of German... Since the end of a parag is also the end of a sentence, that would explain why am is common in that position.
  
  In summary, even a simple thing like identifying the paragraphs of the SPS (which, in the SPS=SBJ theory, would correspond to the entries of the SBJ) is a messy task, that at this stage we cannot hope to solve with 100% accuracy and confidence.  Sigh.

• RE: It is not Chinese

  Jorge_Stolfi > Yesterday, 09:18 PM

  (Yesterday, 04:15 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As I posted before, my assumed criteria for identifying a parag break are
  

  1. If the line has one or more one-leg gallows (p or f), it must be the first one of a parag.
     
  2. If the line ends well before the right margin, it must be the last one of a parag.
     
  3. If the line ends in -m or -g, its likely to be the last one of a parag.
     
  4. If the spacing above the line is larger than average, it is likely to be the first of a parag.
     

  
  I forgot a rule specific to the SPS:
  
    5. There should be an approximately one-to-one correspondence between stars in the left margin and parags, and each star should be near the first line of the corresponding parag.
  
  i say "approximately" because it seems that the star and parag counts in some page are off by one or two units; and "near" because the stars and parags are often out of alignment.  As if the Scribe was not aware of the correspondence, and copied stars and parags independently of each other.

• RE: It is not Chinese

  tavie > Yesterday, 10:13 PM

  (Yesterday, 09:11 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As for the am, it may be an abbreviation like "etc." -- which the Scribe was allowed to insert at the end of a parag in place of certain unimportant words in order to avoid a very short final line, but might also have been used by the Author in the draft to avoid repetition or redundant phrases.  
  
  But the am may also be a word of the language that is common at the end of sentences, like the "-ta" or "-desu" of Japanese, the "ist" of German... Since the end of a parag is also the end of a sentence, that would explain why am is common in that position.

  
  But what I said in the post above was that I see the exact opposite:  final m m seems underrepresented at the ends of paragraph that we can see clearly (i.e. those with clear indents).  It does not seem common at paragraph end, let alone more likely to occur at paragraph end.  It underperforms.  Quite badly.    
  
  This is what I see based on the Scribe 3 Stars section (all folios in Stars except 115r, where Lisa thought it might be two scribes).  Perhaps my stats are wrong since it's been a while since I gathered these particular ones, and they need double-checking.  But even allowing for errors, I don't see evidence for saying that paragraph ends are more likely to have final m.

• RE: It is not Chinese

  oshfdk > 11 hours ago

  (Yesterday, 10:13 PM)tavie Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But what I said in the post above was that I see the exact opposite:  final m m seems underrepresented at the ends of paragraph that we can see clearly (i.e. those with clear indents).  It does not seem common at paragraph end, let alone more likely to occur at paragraph end.  It underperforms.  Quite badly.

  
  This would be expected, if the final m was used as "etc.". It would end paragraphs when there is no space left to finish the paragraph on the same line, but the remaining part is too short to put it into a line on its own. When there is plenty of space, as in the case with clear indents, there is no need for "etc.", the paragraph is just written out in full.

• RE: It is not Chinese

  tavie > 11 hours ago

  (11 hours ago)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This would be expected, if the final m was used as "etc.". It would end paragraphs when there is no space left to finish the paragraph on the same line, but the remaining part is too short to put it into a line on its own. When there is plenty of space, as in the case with clear indents, there is no need for "etc.", the paragraph is just written out in full.

  
  
  I was focusing on the second suggestion, that final am is common at paragraph end (which I don't think it is) because it may represent a word that is common at sentence end, and I hadn't thought through the first suggestion as you set it out here.  I see that could make sense if we believe there are likely many more paragraph ends than are implied by indentation, but there doesn't seem to be evidence for this, so I would still query the rule that final m is likely to indicate a paragraph end.

• RE: It is not Chinese

  ReneZ > 10 hours ago

  Only two points I would add to this: 
  Indeed, Eva-m is preferably line-ending but I do not see it as preferably paragraph-ending. 
  Furthermore, there are three cases in the stars section where there seems to be a single longer paragraph but still stars every few lines.
  This is a bit subjective though.

• RE: It is not Chinese

  Jorge_Stolfi > 10 hours ago

  (Yesterday, 10:13 PM)tavie Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But what I said in the post above was that I see the exact opposite:  final m m seems underrepresented at the ends of paragraph that we can see clearly (i.e. those with clear indents).  It does not seem common at paragraph end, let alone more likely to occur at paragraph end.  It underperforms.  Quite badly.   

  
  What I meant was that m can be used as evidence of end-of-paragraph when conditions (1.) and (2.) are false: that is, when the next line has no p or f, and has full width.
  
  But I am afraid that you are right.  This criterion is wrong.
  
  Sigh.  I have to check again all breaks in the SPS.  Fortunately most of them (I think) are determined by criteria (1.) and/or (2.).  For the others, I will have to rely on (4.) (wider interline spacing) and/or (5.) (near a star) and/or (6.) (it is the last line on the page).
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