Sequential word repetitions in the VMS

[Anton]

On topic:  Anton, those are some really creative ideas to explain the reduplication, especially the one about ordered preferencing. You're right that it would struggle to hold up against both the number and the range of reduplications, and if it were part of a "solution", it would seem special pleading.  But it is an intriguing way of providing a potential explanation for some of the pairs, and also the way some of the manuscript appears to show list-like behaviour.  I'm trying to imagine what it could be in the (possible) context of the manuscript:  ordered lists of medicines or habits to do each day?  Lists of what should be done or should not be done according to astrology?

Once I performed an experiment (however limited) on detecting the narration structure in the VMS, and no traces of it were discovered (see later sections of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. blog post). Since then I have been imagining the VMS not as a consistent narrative, but as a telegraph-style reference book. The idea of ordered listings (perhaps of considerable length) as a significant portion of the VMS would bring this even further from the fluent flow of discourse to what may be described as a line/paragraph rendering of essentially table content. The context, as I see it, would be many-to-one associations, whatever they may be. Examples that you describe fall in this category. There can be many other suggestions, like associations between plants and other stuff (days, planets, stones, whatever).

However, prior to speculating about what these supposed lists may be, it is worth delving deeper into investigating whether the ordered lists is a valid idea in itself, to begin with. I just undertook one interesting experiment, which will take some time because I follow all reduplications manually. I will post the results as soon as I'm ready.

One of implications would be that there are long sequences of the same part of speech.

Another explanation - but I think less likely and covering only a couple of pairs - could be down to how we parse the pair.  e.g. when we see daiin daiin, are those truly identical, or could the "minim" glyphs represent different plain text letters?

Might be, but as you say it would not cover all the reduplication cases. Like, for example, al al leaves no room for manoeuvreing with minims.