Computers and the Humanities, Vol. 12, pp. 223-225 (1978). Pergamon Press. Printed in the U.S.A.
0010-4817/78/010223-03502.00/0 Copyright 9 1978Pergamon Press, Inc.
Project Reports Project: A Computer-Assisted Study of Oral Formulas in Middle English Romances. Director: Dean R. Baldwin, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Behrend College, Erie, Pennsylvania. The purpose of this project is to examine the questions surrounding the repeated phrases in Middle English romances. Can the repeated phrases in the romances properly be called "formulas"? What is their relationship to repeated phrases in earlier, especially AngloSaxon, poetry? Is it possible to distinguish between genuine formulas and mere " t a g s " ? Are repetitions based on metrical requirements, verbal requirements, or both? To what extent does alliteration control the expression or meter of the repeated phrases? The first task in this project is to select likely phrases from the romances and to record these on computer tape. Each entry includes five items: (1) the phrase in Middle English (insofar as computer type can reproduce ME characters); (2) the phrase in Modern English (spelling regularized to facilitate retrieval); (3) the name of the romance; (4) the line number on which the phrase is found; and (5) the metrical scansion of the line, including symbols for alliteration. Entries can be retrieved in a number of ways: by word or words occurring in the phrase, by metrical pattern, by poem title, or by combinations of these. For example, the computer may be asked to print all entries containing the words " s w o r d " and "bright" and conforming to the metrical pattern X-X-X (where X represents an accented syllable) or X-A-A (where A indicates alliteration). The computer used for this project is an IBM 370/168, with a capacity of 4,000,000 bytes. The program uses punched cards (although RJE may also be used) to input data. Three tapes are necessary: the first to receive and print back the " r a w " data for proofreading, the second to sort entries and remove codes from the printout, and the third to store all interf'ded data as a "master tape."
Complete information on the program may be obtained by writing the Computer Center, The Pennsylvania State University, 229 Computer Bldg., University Park, Pennsylvania, 16802. The program is called BAG-Bibliographic and Grouping System. The director would be happy to hear from anyone interested in further details concerning the project and from anyone who has information or references useful to it, particularly lists of formulas compiled by other scholars.
Project: The Parisian Two-Part Organa: Their Style and Evolution. Director: Hans Tischler, Professor, Indiana University, School of Music, Bloomington, Indiana. A complete edition of a body of early music under the title The Parisian Two-Part Organa: Complete Comparative Edition from All Extant Sources has been prepared. This edition represents the first transcription into modern notation of this vast repertory of 1700 settings of music for the Mass and Office hours, mainly composed between c. 1165 and 1220. This work will not appear for several years. Meanwhile, work has begun on a book based on this edition, entitled The Parisian Two-Part Organa: Their Style and Evolution. This is a highly complex subject, involving a dozen major collections in several manuscripts and a number of scattered sources. To arrive at a meaningful resolution of the problems, the entire corpus has been analyzed according to the various style elements such as rhythmic patterns, melodic repetitions, range, preferred consonances, use of accidentals, etc., and according to paleographic and liturgical groupings. These data have been coded, keypunched, and stored on computer tape for statistical analysis by SPSS (the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences). The approptiate programs have been prepared by David Lambert, a computer consultant at the Wrubel Computer Center of Indiana University, and Darlene 223
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PROJECT REPORTS
Fawver, a master's candidate in musicology at Indiana University; they are currently being run on a CDC 6600 computer. The hoped-for results are: (a) clarification of style trends; (b) differentiation of styles, probably relating to both paleographic layers and liturgical functions; and (c) relating the several collections chronologically, there being no stemma for them. These results would all be revelatory contributions to knowledge, since these problems have hitherto been much discussed but never satisfactorily resolved.
Project: Philosophy and the Computer: An Example. Director: Guy-H. Allard, Professor, Institut d'rtudes mrdirvales, Universit6 de Montrral. Translation: Anne Gilmour-Bryson. Research on John the Scot concerned principally his De divisione naturae and his Expositiones in hierarchiam celestem (ed. Jeanne Barbet, CC, 1975). The investigation focused on three particular problems: (a) the influence of rhetorical principles on the composition of the DDN, (b) an analysis of the vocabulary of the Expositiones with the help of a computer made word index, and (c) the different uses or meanings of the word machina/machinamenta in John the Scot. This project report shall discuss mainly the computer assisted portions of the research. For a full discussion, see Jean Scot et l'histoire de la philosophie, Paris, CNRS, 1977. It is evident that John the Scot knew well the merits, virtues and principles of rhetoric. His commentary on the celebrated treatise by Martianus Capella demonstrates his familiarity with its laws and precepts. His theoretical understanding found its use in the framework of the DDN. It is a real dialogue which breaks with the traditional method previously used in which the dialogue was indeed a literary fiction composed of pretentious monologues. When a text like the Expositiones is put into the computer, the following advantages result: (1) a rapid and complete count of each word in the text; (2) the separation of the vocabulary of John the Scot from that of Dionysius the Areopagite or Pseudo Dionysius; (3) a frequency count of each author's vocabulary; (4) the location of textual references to each word with the exception of those considered unnecessary (aux-
iliary verbs, negations, etc.); (5) the isolation of words cited from Christian or pagan authors, proper nouns and Greek words; and (6) a considerable saving in the correction of proofs since the computer does its own error free printing. The existence of an index in no way makes actual reading of the work unnecessary. It remains, nevertheless, a very useful tool with which to trace the general shape of someone's thought and to establish the framework of a given discursive space. Furthermore, it can be said that an index contains its own sense of the work, revealing as it does both the frequency and the morphology of the words in a way ordinary reading cannot, hampered by the position of each word within its context. The alphabetical index to the Expositiones allows us, therefore, to visualize more easily the new forms of words used by the Scot yet absent in Pseudo Dionysius, letting us form a picture of each man's levels of culture, his separate mentality, the differences between them. It is possible to determine which of their thoughts was borrowed from more recent authorities. The computer-made index to the text made possible the discovery of a theological vocabulary in John the Scott nonexistent in the Celestial hierarchy. There exists a group of words borrowed from the liberal disciplines which Dionysius did not use when reflecting on celestial beings. Some new words come from the trivium, from dialectics, from the quadrivium and especially from physics. Not surprisingly, a group of new words come from the interpres and from the expositor. The narrative form of the "commentary" can be seen by the use of such words as declarare or vocare etc.; among which are some Augustinian words such as cogito, conceptus and colligere. The study of words of high frequency repetition as most significant certainly has its place. A list of these words gives a correct enough image of the author's thought processes and of his main preoccupations. Here, there is almost parallel frequency between the commentator and his original text. This does not mean, nevertheless, that words of low frequency are not important. On the contrary, their analysis shows itself to be surprisingly illuminating. Such is the case with the word artificialiter or dialecticae which appear only once in the commentary of John the Scot, or the word creator which appears only once in the Latin translation of Pseudo Dionysius by the Scot.
PROJECT REPORTS
In the case of a c o m m e n t a r y , the f r e q u e n c y differences in the same word between it and the original text itself deserve special attention, since most often this difference indicates the commentator's wish to modify the meaning of a word or to integrate it into his own mode o f thinking. As an example, consider the words relative to creation: creator, creare, ex nihilo, fabrica mundi, which are used 133 times in John the Scot's text and which would be completely absent in Celestial hierarchy had the translator not used creator to translate 8~lxmvpT6~ where Hilduin had used
opifex. Machina/machinamenta are used 22 times in the DDN, once in De praedestinatione, five times in the Expositiones, or 28 times in all. The semantic importance of this word is much greater than its mere frequency rate. In some cases the word is used in the sense of construct or fabricate. if, however, instead of considering the object made one considers the creator of the object,
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the word takes on the meaning of foresight, planning, the attitude of an engineer or an architect applied, in this case, to Providence. Looking further into the significance o f this word leads to the discovery that it may be used in the sense of ruse or strategem. John the Scot uses it in this way often when discussing moral, theological and epistemological matters. Machinamenta evokes the concept of artifice or artificiality in opposition with that which is natural. A connection is thus established between machinamenta and the language arts, which themselves, are to be distinguished from the arts of the quadrivium which are natural disciplines. The computer then with its ability to sort and count words and to give us textual references to each of them, provides a most useful tool to the understanding of philosophical language as well as to the precise way in which each philosopher differs in his use of language even when translating the thought of someone else.
