Repository path: workshop/translations/ved-vejen/device-census.md · rendered 2026-09-09
Page metadata (front matter)
| type | manifest |
|---|---|
| id | ved-vejen-device-census |
| status | frozen |
| created | 2026-08-08 |
| updated | 2026-08-08 |
| links | workshop/translations/ved-vejen/source-unit.txt, wiki/arms/ARM-sense-overlap.md, wiki/findings/results/RS-20260807f-carriage-or-strangeness.md, wiki/base/anchors/A-mchugh-presence/A-mchugh-presence.md |
«Ved Vejen» ¶829–852 — formal device census, made from the Danish alone
Made before any English of this passage existed, by the lead, from source-unit.txt and nothing
else. No English translation of «Ved Vejen» was read, and none is reachable (§4). Frozen and
committed before the translation was begun.
Why this census is split into two classes, and why the split is the point. RS-20260807f
(S130, this arm's step 1) manipulated eighteen devices on Schwob and its accuracy gate failed:
four propositionally identical arms scored 6.944 / 5.889 / 5.889 / 5.111, and the page's limit 4
named the likely mechanism — the flattening operator had supplied causal connectives and, more
seriously, had touched imagery, which wiki/goodness-senses.md's accuracy entry names in its
own first sentence ("propositional content, imagery, and stated detail"). Removing a simile is
an accuracy loss by definition on this list. So this census separates the devices that carry no
proposition and no image from the devices that carry an image, and only the first class is
manipulated. The second class is held byte-identical across every arm.
§1 Class A — form-only devices (no proposition, no image). THE MANIPULATED SET.
Paragraph numbers are the bracketed numbers in source-unit.txt (1–24 = novel ¶829–852).
| id | device | sites |
|---|---|---|
| A1 | One action split across three consecutive one-sentence paragraphs. Og saa kom Solen. / Og steg. / Og fejede Mørket ud af Dalene som med en stor Vinge. The sunrise is paragraphed as three beats |
¶14, 15, 16 |
| A2 | Paragraph-initial Og anaphora. Five paragraph or sentence openings on Og in seven consecutive paragraphs |
¶10, 12 (final sentence), 13, 14, 15, 16 |
| A3 | Subjectless verb as a whole paragraph. Og steg. — two words, no subject, the subject carried from the preceding paragraph |
¶15 |
| A4 | Free indirect discourse, unmarked. Katinka's inference is narrated without any verb of thinking: Men der var noget i Vejen. / Maaske var han heller ikke tilfreds… / Det kom maaske ogsaa af, at hun sov for lidt. |
¶1, 2, 4, 5, 6 |
| A5 | The bare sagde han tag, unvaried, four times. No characterising verb anywhere in the span |
¶1, 11, 12, 13 |
| A6 | The tag interrupting its own clause. Det var som et mægtigt gyldenrødt Hav, sagde han, halvt… and Og saa, lidt efter lidt, sagde han, stod alle Bjergtoppe i Brand |
¶12, 13 |
| A7 | Typographic emphasis (spærret) on function words. #Naar#, #var#, #naar# — the stress falls on a conjunction and a copula, never on a content word |
¶2, 4, 18 |
| A8 | Four-dot trailing ellipsis, and one resumptive initial ellipsis. …allevegne.... / …i det store Hav.... / …i Brand.... and ... Det blev ganske lyst |
¶3, 12, 13, 19 |
| A9 | A subordinate clause standing alone as a paragraph, with no main verb | ¶3 |
| A10 | Habitual naar-frame and ofte — the whole span is iterative, not semelfactive: Naar han kom, naar hun selv kom tilsengs, Naar Huus kom om Aftenen, Han fortalte ofte saadan noget nu |
¶2, 9, 17, 21 |
| A11 | Doubling repetitions. lysere og lysere; saadan noget… saadan noget; halvt… halvt; Ikke en Lyd, ikke et Vindpust |
¶9, 10, 12, 17 |
| A12 | Asyndetic causal juxtaposition. ¶5 and ¶6 stand as two bare paragraphs with the relation between them unstated; ¶4 uses a semicolon where a causal conjunction is available | ¶4, 5→6 |
| A13 | Extreme sentence- and paragraph-length variance. ¶9 is 79 words and holds one long period followed by four short ones; ¶15 is two words. Ratio ≈ 40:1 inside 24 paragraphs | ¶9 vs ¶15 |
| A14 | Understatement of feeling as physical fact. Det var Katinka saa langsommeligt, at han aldrig kom til Ro; Luften var tung inde i Sovekamret, og Bai laa og havde smidt Tæpperne af sig — the marriage stated and not commented on |
¶8, 20 |
| A15 | Impersonal man for a perception with no perceiver named. Oppe i Byen hørte man en Port blive slaaet i |
¶24 |
| A16 | Deixis of time without a tense change — nu i Foraaret, Nu netop i Foraaret, nu ×2 in ¶17–18, anchoring an iterative past to a present-feeling now |
¶1, 3, 17, 18 |
Sixteen Class A devices. Each is manipulable by an operator that changes no proposition and no
image; the operator table is workshop/translations/ved-vejen/R14-v1/translation.md §Sites.
§2 Class B — image-bearing features. HELD IDENTICAL ACROSS EVERY ARM, NEVER MANIPULATED.
| id | feature | site |
|---|---|---|
| B1 | the mountains at dawn as et mægtigt gyldenrødt Hav… halvt af Guld og halvt af Roser |
¶12 |
| B2 | Tinderne sejlede som Øer i det store Hav — peaks as islands, with a verb of sailing |
¶12 |
| B3 | alle Bjergtoppe i Brand — the peaks on fire |
¶13 |
| B4 | fejede Mørket ud af Dalene som med en stor Vinge — the instrumental wing, agent unnamed |
¶16 |
| B5 | De hvide Blade gled som en lys glitrende Regn gennem Sommerluften — blossom as glittering rain |
¶23 |
| B6 | Aftenens biede Tavshed… svøbte sig om alle Ting — the evening's awaited silence wrapping itself |
¶24 |
| B7 | every named particular: Nattoget, Lærkerne, Kirsebærtræerne, Ottetoget, Hyldelysthuset, Engene, Kvæget |
¶9, 10, 21, 22, 23, 24 |
Seven Class B features, none of them touched by any operator in this experiment. They are the
reason the passage has texture at all, which is exactly why removing them would have been an
accuracy loss and not a form loss.
§3 Why this passage decouples form from markedness — the argument the design rests on
RS-20260807f §5 limit 2 states the predecessor's binding defect: "Carrying Schwob's forms marks
the English… A source whose forms can be carried into unmarked English would separate them, and this
project does not have one on the shelf." This is that source, and the reason is checkable rather
than asserted.
wiki/goodness-senses.md's unmarked / literary-contemporary register anchor is
A-mchugh-presence, catalogued (S063) as: invisible free indirect discourse · say-only dialogue
tags · texture carried by named particulars rather than by style · structural one-sentence
paragraphs. Bang 1886 has all four, as A4, A5, B7 and A1/A3. The devices this
census catalogues are not devices that mark English when carried; they are, item for item, the
register the project's own anchor defines as unmarked. Carrying them should therefore cost nothing
on naturalness — which is the experiment's gate G1, declared before anything was translated,
and the experiment is void if it fails.
§4 Contamination — a reachability statement, not a measurement, and it says so
No English translation of «Ved Vejen» is reachable, and none is in the public domain. Project
Gutenberg holds twelve Danish Bang titles and zero English ones (gutendex.com query,
2026-08-08); the only English rendering in existence is Paul Christophersen's Katinka (1990),
which is in copyright, borrow-only, and was not consulted. There is therefore no comparator to
measure against, and the standing rule (CLAUDE.md, contamination) requires that to be said on
the artifact rather than papered over with a bare contamination: value.
What the design does not need from it. Both arms the primary is read on — CARRY and FLAT —
are derived from one lead rendering by a declared operator table. Any recall that rendering
contains is present identically in both, and cannot produce a difference between them. This run's
validity does not turn on independence from any published rendering, which is the condition
CLAUDE.md attaches the constraint to.