Author: lfsaldenbirch

The Mountain Range of Uncommon Words

lfsaldenbirch ,

Time to explore the extended high region from about word 14,000 to 27,000.

2015.06.14 Mountain Range

The sharp increase comes right at the beginning of Chapter 3, A Short Rest.  The end of the sudden decline, here:

[05.127] ‘Thief, thief, thief! Baggins! We hates it, we hates it, we hates it for ever!’

To use recognizable landmarks, all these unusual words occur in Rivendell, among the goblins, and with Gollum.  We recall that unusual words are merely less-frequent, not high-register.  This sustained peak includes Gollum’s sibilant speech and the goblins’ “Clap! Snap! the black crack” poetry full of sound-play as well as the descriptions of Elrond’s sanctuary and his high speech and Thorin’s and Gandalf’s responses in kind.  Elves and goblins have their own languages and Gollum his own idiolect.  I believe that these unusual words twist our ears a little, knock us off of solid, prosy footing.  The slightly uncommon words are consistently so – enough to suggest the alien languages underlying these characters and places.

Chapter One: A Peak in Uncommon Words

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This first local peak occurs in Chapter 1, and we must remember what it represents: the five thousand words surrounding this point contain a peak number of uncommon words.  Still it’s fun to see exactly what’s happening right at the peak:

Uncommon5000GraphChap

So apt.  This little peak comes at

[01.017]: You will notice already that Mr. Baggins was not quite so prosy as he liked to believe, also that he was very fond of flowers.

Yes, indeed, not prosy at all.  Perhaps even given to using uncommon words like “snapdragon” or “laburnums of fire”.  This five thousand word window looks in on plenty of uncommon words like “dwarves” and “dragon”.

You can see that this peak does not fall off immediately, the windows next to it contain “Far Over the Misty Mountains” at their edge.

Presenting: The Uncommon Words

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It’s a beautiful sight!

Uncommon5000GraphChap

I have used a window of five thousand words this time, which shows the trends much more smoothly.  Let’s break this down and read what it is telling us in the next few posts.  Remember our Words Per Chapter list as you look over the graph.  The great news is that since I use Lexos directly on their web site, I can hover over any individual red dot and get the exact word number at the center of that window.  Zipping over to my electronic copy of The Hobbit, I can find that word and report back.

Tech Support is going to try to teach me how to use image-manipulating software to make a layer of chapter break lines to superimpose on each of these graphs.  If he succeeds, I will owe Tech Support a very big batch of blueberry muffins.

The Drawing Board

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Very good.

We have a new text with everything MarkWords-ed, capitalized or no.  We have doublechecked our assumptions, gone back to the OED, and decided that “hobbit” is not uncommon.  It’s a Middle Earth word, created by Tolkien, such as any author might be free to name his characters and concepts.  “Hobbit” is not counting as an uncommon word in our analyses.  Now we’re ready to address “how did Tolkien do that?”  We’re looking at how uncommon words contribute to the register of the work.

Let’s make a graph!

My Tech Support

lfsaldenbirch

Tech Support solved our situation in the time it took me to make a second cup of coffee.  He made the MarkWords script convert everything to lower case letters, which will certainly take care of business for now.  We’re going to explore preserving capitalization in the original concordance-making script, but first we must be certain of how spreadsheets will handle capitals.

Not only am I grateful for Tech Support’s skills, but is it boastful to say that I am grateful for my child’s can-help attitude?

Constant Vigilance!

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You see the problem, don’t you, Word Fans?  I must admit I had to have a good night’s sleep before my subconscious knocked me over the head with it.  How can a paragraph about hobbits have nearly no uncommon words, when “hobbit” is an uncommon word?  In fact about a quarter of the instances of the word “hobbit” are in Chapter 1.

Entirely my fault.  In my eagerness to respond to SonofSaradoc’s excellent question, I cut corners.  Let this be a lesson to us all.  I entered every word from the Concordance page, minus the proper names and my own text, as the MarkWords file.  Ahem.  So every capitalized instance of “Hobbit” was tagged “uncommon”, but most were not.  If “Blackberry” had been in our text, which it wasn’t, it would have been marked… but “blackberrying” was not [04.003], and it should be.  I will now put the kettle on, go back to the drawing board, and enter all the uncommon words, both uppercase and lowercase, not lemmatized.

In fact, this may take a smallish bribe to Tech Support, as his original code did not preserve letter case.  I may just run through the list and capitalize things so that we get both sorts into our MarkWords file, but we will obviously need case preserved in future.

Please enjoy this soothing cup of tea while you’re waiting.

Uncommon Words: High Points in Chapter One

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UncommonGraph

The first little local peak comes in the middle of the beautiful song “Far Over the Misty Mountains” – uncommon words and beautiful turns of phrase in the poetry and surrounding it.

The second local peak falls in the middle of the discussion of the adventure.

[01.116] ’That is why I settled on burglary – especially when I remembered the existence of a Side-door. And here is our little Bilbo Baggins, the burglar, the chosen and selected burglar.

There are dragons in this part of the discussion, and heroes and swords… and our dear burglar.  You may recall, Word Fans, that “burglar” is well outside The Ten Thousand most common words.

UPDATE 2015.06.13 There was a grievous error in my method, Word Fans, as reviewed in my post on Constant Vigilance!  I’ve removed any tags from this post so that only you good folks who are reading chronologically will see this little detour into error.

Uncommon Words: Low Point in Mirkwood

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I’m sure your eye was caught as mine was by the extreme low point at 44,877.

UncommonGraph

[08.012] ‘Twelve yards! I should have thought it was thirty at least, but my eyes don’t see as well as they used a hundred years ago.

The company in Mirkwood is facing hunger and the effects of prolonged dimness.  They’re trying to cross the river which seems like an impossible task; it’s not their first low point, but they are certainly without time for any fancy words.  You can see that our graph leaps upward sharply right afterward?  That sudden peak comes when Thorin shoots the deer and Bombur falls in the water – hope and despair!

[08.029]  Thorin was the only one who had kept his feet and his wits. As soon as they had landed he had bent his bow and fitted an arrow in case any hidden guardian of the boat appeared. Now he sent a swift and sure shot into the leaping beast. …

[08.030] Before they could shout in praise of the shot, however, a dreadful wail from Bilbo put all thoughts of venison out of their minds. ‘Bombur has fallen in! Bombur is drowning!’ he cried.

UPDATE 2015.06.13 There was a grievous error in my method, Word Fans, as reviewed in my post on Constant Vigilance!  I’ve removed any tags from this post so that only you good folks who are reading chronologically will see this little detour into error.

Mistakenly Presenting: The Uncommon Words

lfsaldenbirch

Good morning, Word Fans!  Alert Reader SonofSaradoc asked the very straightforward question, “Where are the uncommon words?”  Frankly, I just imagined that they would be scattered evenly throughout – thank you, SonofSaradoc, for saving me from that very poor bit of judgement!  I ran Lexos with all the uncommon words tagged, and LOOK!  Great news – when I use Lexos right on their web site, I can click on a particular point and get the exact number of the word in the middle of that point.

The clearest graph of this question is the rolling average graph with a window of 1000 words:

UncommonGraph

Sweet quaffle.

The very first low point – a place abundantly wealthy in Common words – is in the middle of this paragraph:

[01.004] The mother of our particular hobbit – what is a hobbit? I suppose hobbits need some description nowadays, since they have become rare and shy of the Big People, as they call us.

Prosaic, common, everyday, ordinary words.  Workhorse words.  You can tell what these words would say on any question without the bother of asking them.  These beautiful, common words are our gateway into Middle Earth, ten furry toes solidly on familiar ground.

The first uncommon words in the novel are at 01.002, “porthole”, “knob”, “tunnel”, and “fond”.

UPDATE 2015.06.13 There was a grievous error in my method, Word Fans, as reviewed in my post on Constant Vigilance!  I’ve removed any tags from this post so that only you good folks who are reading chronologically will see this little detour into error.