Sequential word repetitions in the VMS

[Anton]

what if the repeating sequences relate to usage of numbers like a thousand thousand, or a million million, or more appropriately something like two two to say twenty two

I think that's unlikely. Quanitites like one million (a thousand thousand), let alone greater than that, would hardly be expected in any treatise of this time. Anything like "two-two standing for four" would be expressed as two-by-two or two-and-two or twice-to, and thus would not result in exact reduplication. "Two two for twenty two" - I think this positional expression is out of scope of the medieval mindset.

By now I'm inclined to think that reduplication is likely to be a product of some kind of shuffling. If I'm not mistaken, this aspect has not yet been researched in any detail. Let's say transpose the VMS text paragraph-wise and see what happens with reduplication and word pair affinities in general - has anybody done at least an exercise that trivial?