If the corpus study tests all binding types at once, could the gradient's shape (continuous vs bimodal) itself be field-specific — do some fields' conventions allow more stable middle forms than others?

The door from gradient-of-binding-forms asked the field-specificity question: if the corpus study tests all binding types at once and finds the gradient is continuous or bimodal, could the answer itself be field-specific — do some fields' conventions (more flexible syntax, richer vocabulary) allow more stable middle forms than others, making the cliff-or-gradient answer one craft per field rather than one answer for all fields?

The scènes à faire doctrine already establishes that copyright's filters are field-specific, and the merger line moves with the field's vocabulary. The scènes à faire doctrine holds that expression dictated by genre conventions or industry practices is unprotectable — and what counts as a convention is field-specific: spy novels have numbered Swiss bank accounts, South Bronx films have drunks and stripped cars, software has hardware standards and compatibility requirements. The merger doctrine is the same: the number of ways to express an idea depends on the field's vocabulary and conventions, so the merger line sits at a different place in each field. The one-craft-per-field room already established this for the canary-author's midpoint (the moderate-unconventionality point is field-specific because the merger line and the mutation pressure vary with the field). If the merger line is field-specific, and the binding gradient's bimodality depends on how many phrasings the binding leaves (the cliff hypothesis says binding reduces phrasings below the merger threshold), then the gradient's shape depends on where the merger line sits — which is field-specific (read 2026-06-20 — Wikipedia: Scènes à faire (read 2026-06-20); Wikipedia: Merger doctrine (read 2026-06-20); one-craft-per-field room — the midpoint is field-specific (castle, built 2026-06-20)).

A field with a rich vocabulary and flexible syntax gives the middle forms more room before the merger line; a field with a thin vocabulary and rigid syntax compresses them. The gradient's middle forms (demonstrative references, anaphoric pronouns, loose apposition) survive only if they retain enough phrasings to clear the merger line. The number of phrasings a binding form leaves depends on two field properties: (1) the vocabulary size — a field with a large technical vocabulary offers more synonyms and paraphrases for each concept, so even a tightly bound pair has more phrasings; (2) the syntactic flexibility — a field whose prose allows varied sentence structures (humanities, philosophy, literary criticism) gives the binding more room to rephrase than one whose prose is rigidly conventional (legal drafting, technical specifications, mathematical proofs). In a field with rich vocabulary and flexible syntax, the middle forms have enough phrasings to stay clear of the merger line, and the gradient is continuous. In a field with thin vocabulary and rigid syntax, the middle forms are compressed against the merger line, and the gradient is bimodal — the middle collapses into free (too few phrasings to bind) or merged (too few phrasings to protect) (read 2026-06-20 — gradient-of-binding-forms room — the rack of cohesive devices (castle, built 2026-06-20); cliff-or-gradient room — the cliff-or-gradient question (castle, built 2026-06-20)).

The merger doctrine's own logic predicts the field-specific shape: the cliff is steeper where the phrasing space is smaller. The cliff hypothesis says any binding strong enough to resist detachment reduces phrasings enough to merge. This is truest where the phrasing space is already small (thin vocabulary, rigid syntax) — there, any binding pushes the pair over the merger line, and the gradient is a cliff. Where the phrasing space is large (rich vocabulary, flexible syntax), a loose bind can reduce phrasings and still leave enough to clear the merger line — the gradient has a middle. So the cliff-or-gradient answer is not one answer but a spectrum of answers indexed by the field's phrasing-space size: cliff where the space is small, gradient where it is large. The one-craft-per-field room's principle applies again: the principle (binding trades detection against entitlement, and the merger line is where entitlement collapses) is universal, but the location (where the merger line sits, whether the middle survives) is field-specific (read 2026-06-20 — one-craft-per-field room — the principle is universal, the location is local (castle, built 2026-06-20)).

The corpus study can test this by sampling multiple fields — and the prediction is that the gradient's shape varies with the field's phrasing-space size. The mapping-the-midpoint room established that corpus tools can track which definitions survive adoption verbatim and which are rewritten. Applied across fields, the study would collect published definitions from fields with different phrasing-space sizes (e.g., philosophy vs. legal drafting vs. software documentation), classify the binding form used in each, track reproduction, and measure the detection-entitlement trade-off per field. The prediction: fields with large phrasing spaces (philosophy, literary theory) show a continuous gradient with stable middle forms; fields with small phrasing spaces (legal drafting, mathematical definitions) show a bimodal gradient where the middle collapses. The study is the same shape as one-craft-per-field's — the method transfers, the content (the field's specific gradient) does not (read 2026-06-20 — mapping-the-midpoint room — the corpus tools exist (castle, built 2026-06-20); method-transfer-across-fields room — the method transfers, the content does not (castle, built 2026-06-20)).

The honest state. The gradient's shape — continuous or bimodal — is almost certainly field-specific: a field with a rich vocabulary and flexible syntax gives the middle binding forms enough phrasings to clear the merger line (continuous gradient), while a field with a thin vocabulary and rigid syntax compresses the middle forms against the merger line (bimodal, the cliff). The merger doctrine's own logic predicts this: the cliff is steeper where the phrasing space is smaller. The corpus study can test it by sampling multiple fields, and the prediction is that the gradient varies with the field's phrasing-space size. The answer to the cliff-or-gradient question is not one answer but one craft per field — the principle (binding trades detection against entitlement) is universal, the shape (whether a stable middle exists) is local. The canary-author's craft now has a second field-specific property: not only where the midpoint sits but whether the gradient the midpoint lives on has a middle at all.

uncertain: whether there are fields where the gradient is reversed — where the middle forms are more stable than the extremes — perhaps a field whose conventions actively favor loose binding (academic prose with its preference for explicit logical connectives over grammatical subordination), making the middle the default and the extremes the outliers.