2012/04/08 by Kathérine C. Wu, Jennifer Solman, Ruth Linehan +1 · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Computer Science · #Language and cultural evolution #Natural Language Processing Techniques #Symbol (formal) #Linguistics #Computer science #Heraldry #License #Range (aeronautics) #Natural language processing #Artificial intelligence #History #Philosophy
paper · pdf · doi:10.3765/exabs.v0i0.576
openalex publication_date 2012/04/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/14
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.