Re: Fw: Character n anomaly

[Rene Zandbergen <r_zandbergen@xxxxxxxxx>]

Gabriel wrote:

> The question to ask (to which of course I haven't
> got an answer) is: 
> what would convince me that the spaces are
> separating words?

A first list of points in favour:

- They look like spaces and spaces separate words in
  most ME manuscripts.
- Taking them as word separators results in a 
  vocabulary with a realistic word length distribution
- The resulting vocabulary follows Zipf's 1st law
- Label words are found in the text delimited by
  spaces

I like these arguments, personally. I agree that
Occam's razor should be enjoyed with care, but I
would tend to say that any other explanation for
word spaces would amount to adding 'complications'.

Spaces could delimit syllables or word fragments
(the latter like in Arabic) but then I would 
have expected to see more spaces in the labels as
well. (Unless the language is monosyllabic,
but that of course still makes the spaces word
separators).

Cheers, Rene


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