{"id":908,"date":"2010-07-01T07:01:00","date_gmt":"2010-07-01T07:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2010\/07\/01\/using-a-computer-to-help-decipher-ancient-texts\/"},"modified":"2010-07-01T07:01:00","modified_gmt":"2010-07-01T07:01:00","slug":"using-a-computer-to-help-decipher-ancient-texts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2010\/07\/01\/using-a-computer-to-help-decipher-ancient-texts\/","title":{"rendered":"Using a Computer to Help Decipher Ancient Texts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By way of a misleadingly titled and not always entirely accurate article on the science fiction website, io9.com, <a href=\"http:\/\/io9.com\/5576734\/computer-program-deciphers-a-dead-language-that-mystified-linguists?skyline=true&amp;s=i\">Computer program deciphers a dead language that mystified linguists<\/a>, I ran across a fascinating paper: <em><a href=\"http:\/\/people.csail.mit.edu\/bsnyder\/papers\/bsnyder_acl2010.pdf\">A Statistical Model for Lost Language Decipherment<\/a><\/em> by Benjamin Snyder and Regina Barzilay of CSAIL at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Kevin Knight of ISI at the University of Southern California:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Dozens of lost languages have been deciphered<br \/>by humans in the last two centuries. In each<br \/>case, the decipherment has been considered a ma-<br \/>jor intellectual breakthrough, often the culmina-<br \/>tion of decades of scholarly efforts. Computers<br \/>have played no role in the decipherment any of<br \/>these languages.[sic] In fact, skeptics argue that com-<br \/>puters do not possess the \u201clogic and intuition\u201d re-<br \/>quired to unravel the mysteries of ancient scripts.<br \/>In this paper, we demonstrate that at least some of<br \/>this logic and intuition can be successfully mod-<br \/>eled, allowing computational tools to be used in<br \/>the decipherment process.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>If you&#8217;re interested in Ugaritic and in computer translation and decipherment, check it out.<\/p>\n<div class='kindleWidget kindleLight' ><img src=\"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-content\/plugins\/send-to-kindle\/media\/white-15.png\" \/><span>Send to Kindle<\/span><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By way of a misleadingly titled and not always entirely accurate article on the science fiction website, io9.com, Computer program deciphers a dead language that mystified linguists, I ran across a fascinating paper: A Statistical Model for Lost Language Decipherment &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2010\/07\/01\/using-a-computer-to-help-decipher-ancient-texts\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}