Year: 2012
Type: conference-abstract
Abstract: The popular press has promoted recent claims of statistical methods that can distinguish writing from non-linguistic symbols. One problem with such claims, though, is the dearth of non-linguistic symbol "texts" which could be compared with written language. This project fills that void by developing electronic corpora of known non-linguistic systems. To date we have developed corpora of several systems: heraldry; Totem poles; Mesopotamian deity symbols; Vinča symbols; Pictish symbols; mathematical equations; weather icons. Corpus sizes range from several hundred to several tens of thousands of symbols. All corpora are encoded in XML and will be released under an open-source license.
Authors: Katherine Wu, Jennifer Solman, Ruth Linehan, Richard Sproat
Institutions: Reed College, Oregon Health & Science University
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
Funder: National Science Foundation
OpenAlex ID: W2464438314