4 hours ago
(This post was last modified: 4 hours ago by npcompl33t.)
I want to discuss P/F gallows, and their relationship to K/T. Throughout this post I am going to refer to my proposed 'chronological gradient'. If you disagree such a gradient exists, there are other places to argue that.
LFD's explanation for P/F is that they represent Ke/Te, based on the fact K is depleted in line openings. However, this explanation alone doesn't seem to line up with what we see in the MS.
K is only depleted in line openings in Herbal A, which almost entirely lacks any ke or te words. Pch is incredibly common, but tech and kech is nonexistent.
The charts below show the per 10k occurrences, arranged by my chronological gradient of
Note, the apparent gradual increase in Ke/te from the 1.5-2a sections, coincides almost exactly with the decline of tch and kch. Pch is slightly less common in 2a, but it's use is much flatter over the entire course of the MS.
It's clear from the above charts P/F cannot simply be Ke or Te, as Ke/Te did not become popular until pharma.
To better see the differences between P/F bearing words and K/T bearing words, i created the same MDS plots, but I filtered to only Gallows bearing words, and I replaced all gallows characters with <G>. For each bifolia, i then pooled the <P/F> gallows, and the <K/T> gallows.
For comparison, I also created a 2nd version, that uses Ke/Te instead of K/T. In this version, Ke/Te are collapsed to <G>, so we can compare P/F to ke/te words directly.
This allows us compare word construction patterns between P/F, K/T and Ke/Te, along the MDS dimensions. When we do this, something very interesting happens.
In the chart below, each arrow points from the same bifolio's P/F words, to its K/T words.
Immediately something is very obvious. P/F virtually always sit to the right of K/T. What's more, the distance between the P/F words and the K/T words increases over the course of the manuscript, as the chart below shows. Comparing P/F to Ke/Te does not resolve this issue -- in fact this creates substantially greater distance between the points in 1a/1b, while not particularly lowering the later distances.
If i turn this (pf)->(kt) into a vector, I can compare it directly against the local path for all words. Basically, this is seeing if the direction of the pf->kt matches the direction of the overall gradient. If the directions align, the arrow is green. If they point in the opposite direction, it is orange. The charts at the bottom report the actual angle of alignment.
We can see that overwhelmingly, P/F and K/T are separated in the direction of the gradient. This strongly implies that P/F are more conservative or 'lagged' K/T. In other words: at any given point, P/F are following older word construction patterns than K/T.
This raises many important questions.
LFD's explanation for P/F is that they represent Ke/Te, based on the fact K is depleted in line openings. However, this explanation alone doesn't seem to line up with what we see in the MS.
K is only depleted in line openings in Herbal A, which almost entirely lacks any ke or te words. Pch is incredibly common, but tech and kech is nonexistent.
The charts below show the per 10k occurrences, arranged by my chronological gradient of
- Ke or Te
- Kch or Tch
- pch
Note, the apparent gradual increase in Ke/te from the 1.5-2a sections, coincides almost exactly with the decline of tch and kch. Pch is slightly less common in 2a, but it's use is much flatter over the entire course of the MS.
It's clear from the above charts P/F cannot simply be Ke or Te, as Ke/Te did not become popular until pharma.
To better see the differences between P/F bearing words and K/T bearing words, i created the same MDS plots, but I filtered to only Gallows bearing words, and I replaced all gallows characters with <G>. For each bifolia, i then pooled the <P/F> gallows, and the <K/T> gallows.
For comparison, I also created a 2nd version, that uses Ke/Te instead of K/T. In this version, Ke/Te are collapsed to <G>, so we can compare P/F to ke/te words directly.
This allows us compare word construction patterns between P/F, K/T and Ke/Te, along the MDS dimensions. When we do this, something very interesting happens.
In the chart below, each arrow points from the same bifolio's P/F words, to its K/T words.
Immediately something is very obvious. P/F virtually always sit to the right of K/T. What's more, the distance between the P/F words and the K/T words increases over the course of the manuscript, as the chart below shows. Comparing P/F to Ke/Te does not resolve this issue -- in fact this creates substantially greater distance between the points in 1a/1b, while not particularly lowering the later distances.
If i turn this (pf)->(kt) into a vector, I can compare it directly against the local path for all words. Basically, this is seeing if the direction of the pf->kt matches the direction of the overall gradient. If the directions align, the arrow is green. If they point in the opposite direction, it is orange. The charts at the bottom report the actual angle of alignment.
We can see that overwhelmingly, P/F and K/T are separated in the direction of the gradient. This strongly implies that P/F are more conservative or 'lagged' K/T. In other words: at any given point, P/F are following older word construction patterns than K/T.
This raises many important questions.
- Are P/F an 'archaic' or conservative 'K/T'?
- Why did P/F not eventually get the same E-treatment as K/T?
- What does this mean for Ke/Te words as a whole? Is <e> simply some kind of shorthand or alternative notation that never is integrated with P/F?
- Are the apparent coeval drop of <G>ch and rise of <G>e related? ch already strongly resembles ee.
![[+]](https://www.voynich.ninja/images/collapse_collapsed.png)