Hidden Signals in Dream of the Red Chamber: A Computational Text Analysis of Edition Layers, Writers’ Habits and Plot Turns
Abstract
This article tests whether the stylistic break between the first 80 and the last 40 chapters of Dream of the Red Chamber can be told apart from the splicing of editions. Diagnostic variants and 8-gram overlap show that Project Gutenberg e-text No. 24264 carries Zhiyan-recension text in chapters 1 to 80 except 67. They also show that it carries Cheng-recension text in chapter 67 and chapters 81 to 120. Therefore, every test was repeated on Wikisource transcriptions of the Cheng A and Cheng B prints. Thirty-four masked function characters enter leave-one-chapter-out classification. The analysis also includes an energy-statistic change point, block permutation, a sentence-block bootstrap, and a trend-versus-step comparison. Character networks and an audited emotion lexicon serve as plot-level checks. In all three texts, the single change point falls after chapter 80 (block permutation p≤0.004). The leave-one-chapter-out area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve is 0.983-0.988. Effect sizes correlate at 0.99 between the e-text and Cheng A. The share of 笑道 (“said with a smile”) among quotations falls from about 36.00% to about 7.00%. Seven or eight of chapters 81 to 91 lean toward the earlier style. Sadness words turn after chapter 94 and household figures gain brokerage in the last 40 chapters, neither at chapter 80. In the Cheng prints the break-location interval is wide, and 嗎 and 林黛玉 are edition-sensitive. Authorship notes of annotated editions can cite these edition-specific results, and digital classics should carry base-text and conversion metadata.
References
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