ἀμφὶ δὲ χαλκὸς ἐλάμπετο εἴκελος αὐγῇ
ἢ πυρὸς αἰθομένου ἢ ἠελίου ἀνιόντος.

Iliad 22.134-135; Butler

In 1854, when the island’s deaf population peaked, the United States national average was one deaf person in 5728, while on Martha’s Vineyard it was one in 155 … Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language , by
……………………………………………………………………….Ossa, Bolide
…………………………………………………………………numismatist
……………………………………………………………….crissum tuff
Ball’s Pyramid population bottleneck black capped chickadee song
…………………………………………………………dispositive; Montague
…………………………………………………..grammar; Ultron;
……………………………………………….Mladen Dolar; caudal;
………………………………………….. latitudinarian Coir Banda
Natural gas is often described as the cleanest fossil fuel, producing less carbon dioxide per joule delivered than either coal or oil and far fewer pollutants than other hydrocarbon fuels. However, in absolute terms, it comprises a substantial percentage of human carbon emissions, and this contribution is projected to grow …environmental effects of natural gas

— can literary fiction (say, a Shakespeare play) be distinguished from commercial fiction (say, a John Grisham novel) on this basis of their word distributions (how many words are repeated in what ways how many times in these different genres)?

–a related question: will a work of literary fiction (a “classic”) have more “repetitions” than a work of commercial fiction?

— how are we to distinguish words that are repeated thematically (‘nothing’ in Shakespeare) from words that are repeated out of poor writing or another reason (is there a need to make such a distinction).

— given x number of words (the “author’s vocabulary” or “all the vocabulary the author is known to have used in print”) and y number of words (“the book”/ the number of words in his book) can we make an informed guess about how many repetitions that work might contain.

–Do people with larger vocabularies repeat words more or less often than people with smaller vocabularies, or about the same?

–Do early English literary writers (Shakespeare) repeat themselves more than late English literary writers (Joyce); how does it compare to the trend in, say, non-literary epistolary writing over the same period?

–How about across cultures as well as times? Does Virgil, Homer, or Shakespeare make more use of repetitions? How do the repetitions in literary work compare to those in a legal document, or to those in a collection of the letters of a college-aged student.

–How about with respect to speech? do we repeat ourselves more when we speak or when we write? Does Philip Roth repeat words more frequently when he speaks or when he writes?

–Suppose literary word repetitions (‘Nothing’ in King Lear) don’t indicate a ‘deeper meaning’ — what else might such repetitions indicate? Is repetition a rhetorical device, a natural consequence of writing with some purpose in mind, or something else? If I were to right down eighty words randomly would it contain more repetitions than a sonnet of Petrarch that had around the same word count?

From the Theatetus (trans. F.M. Cornford) (Perseus.)

Only there is this rule to be observed. Do not conduct your questioning unfairly. It is very unreasonable that one who professes a concern for virtue should be constantly guilty of unfairness in argument. Unfairness here consists in not observing the distinction between a debate and a conversation. A debate need not be taken seriously and one may trip up an opponent to the best of one’s power, but a conversation should be taken in earnest; one should help out the other party and bring home to him only those slips and fallacies that are due to himself or to his earlier instructors. If you follow this rule, your associates will lay the blame for their confusions and perplexities on themselves and not on you; they will like you and court your society, and disgusted with themselves, will turn to philosophy, hoping to escape from their former selves and become different men. But if, like so many, you take the opposite course, you will reach the opposite result; instead of turning your companions to philosophy, you will make them hate the whole business when they get older. So, if you will take my advice, you will meet us in the candid spirit I spoke of, without hostility or contentiousness, and honestly consider what we mean […]

forms of ‘v‘ during late middle ages:

During the Late Middle Ages, two forms of ‘v’ developed, which were both used for its ancestor ‘u’ and modern ‘v’. The pointed form ‘v’ was written at the beginning of a word, while a rounded form ‘u’ was used in the middle or end, regardless of sound. So whereas ‘valor’ and ‘excuse’ appeared as in modern printing, ‘have’ and ‘upon’ were printed as ‘haue’ and ‘vpon’. The first distinction between the letters ‘u’ and ‘v’ is recorded in a Gothic alphabet from 1386, where ‘v’ preceded ‘u’. By the mid-16th century, the ‘v’ form was used to represent the consonant and ‘u’ the vowel sound, giving us the modern letter ‘u’. Capital ‘U’ was not accepted as a distinct letter until many years later.

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…………………………*OZU page/ late spring

……………………………Pairs
……………………………Locations, Kanagawa
……………………………Locations, Japan
……………………………..Lane Shots
………………………………Directions Scene
……………………………….Speculations
…..

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ΜΗ.

δια μου κεφαλας φλοξ ουρανια βαιη.

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φλοξ, φλογος (f.): fire. βαιη: optative βαινω.

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Through my head walks a heavenly fire.

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[Should, may, might cross?]