# Last edited on 2025-09-12 08:30:55 by stolfi
# 082 Character and digraph frequencies in formulaic text

SUMMARY

  Herbal texts usually follow a formula, e.g. name of plant, list of
  diseases, mode of preparation, mode of application, etc. The syntax is
  usually simplified and function words are often omitted. This
  structure radically affects the frequency of words on the first and
  last lnes, and hence the frequency of characters and character paits.
  The goal of this note is to demonstrate and investigate this effect.
  
DATA

  We use two versions -- Latin and English -- of the same "alchemical
  herbal" text, provided by Marco Ponzi, namely "latn/ahl" and
  "engl/ahe"
  
    ln -s ../../langbank
    ln -s ../.. work
    ln -s work/compute_freqs.gawk