RE: VMs: Bifolios and Smudges

["GC" <glenclaston@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Gabriel wrote:

> One has to be a bit careful with the interpretation of those figures. For
> example, looking for unique A or B words that appear only once,
> how can one
> be sure that those are "uniqe" words to that language?  There is
> no way to
> differentiate between a A- or B-word that appears once from
> another (rare,
> but not necessarily unique) word that is common to both language
> but appears
> only in one of them due to the (short) length of the corpus.
>
> Instead one could look at the commonest words in one language that do not
> appear at all in the other. However for something like this, it would be
> better to have the entire ms transcribed.

If these were real "languages", I'd worry about this more, but these are not
"languages", only differences in the same or similar systems.  Rene has
demonstrated that each section has a different general statistic, and there
are variations sometimes within sections.  I don't think '8am' represents
the same word every time, on any given page or in either system under
scrutiny, yet it appears at least once in ALL herbal folios, [ha] and [hb].
Looking at what is different first and breaking these into their components
is to me desirable before examining what is common to both systems.  My
comment that 50% were 'unique' is incorrect, due to the lateness of the
hour.  25% are 'unique', but over 50% are common.  That leaves about 25%
that is unique to [ha] or [hb].  Finding out where these start, how they are
used, what are the characteristics of the surrounding 'words', these are
important things to know.  If [hb] uniques appear on lines only with other
[hb]words, and are seldom surrounded by 'common' words, this is significant.
Many other features beyond Currier's statistical "languages" might also be
observed.

But if I'm comparing [ha] to [hb], knowing from Currier and Rene that these
are different from each other AND from other sections, it would make sense
to analyze each section against another to come up with where they differ
and where they are common, before moving on to say, the astronomical
section.  In the herbal section, bifolios in both [ha] and [hb] have big
differences from one another, but at the same time follow a general system
that is roughly equivalent in Currier analysis.  I've a lot of questions to
ask of these bifolios.  Is it true they were composed as I surmise?  If so,
can I use this to determine order and connection?  Are there bifolios with
little or no connection to the other group, and are there bifolios with a
lot in common in regards to the other statistical grouping?  It's given me
some pretty good NEAR's and FAR's already, but there is that problem of too
small a sample, so NEAR's and FAR's may be all I can hope for at the moment.
Still, that's better than staring and guessing... at least I will have
something a little more solid (if a bit squishy, at least not totally wet)
as a foundation for future 'guesses'.

But thank you for the caution - you may notice I've been qualifying what
I've been saying, and not yelling "EUREKA" at every turn.  My wife used to
tell me I'd never find the gold if I didn't dig, so here I am with pick and
shovel.

GC

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