Quantcast
ZME Science
  • CoronavirusNEW
  • News
  • Environment
    • Climate
    • Animals
    • Renewable Energy
    • Eco tips
    • Environmental Issues
    • Green Living
  • Health
    • Alternative Medicine
    • Anatomy
    • Diseases
    • Genetics
    • Mind & Brain
    • Nutrition
  • Future
  • Space
  • Feature
    • Feature Post
    • Art
    • Great Pics
    • Design
    • Fossil Friday
    • AstroPicture
    • GeoPicture
    • Did you know?
    • Offbeat
  • More
    • About
    • The Team
    • Advertise
    • Contribute
    • Our stance on climate change
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact
No Result
View All Result
ZME Science

No Result
View All Result
ZME Science
No Result
View All Result
Home Other

Researchers use computer program to reconstruct ancient languages

Mihai Andrei by Mihai Andrei
February 12, 2013
in Other

The Rosetta Stone may actually come in the form of a computer – one that can speak virtually any language, if programmed well enough.

rosetta stone

Languages have evolved, changed, adapted, mingled, disappeared – they’re way more dynamic than you would think; and for some of them, we have really limited information to study them on. This is why researchers have gone for help to computers, who are just much better than us at this kind of thing – if there is a linguist to program them, that is. The team of researchers reconstructed a set of protolanguages from a database of more than 142,000 words from 637 Austronesian languages, which are spoken in Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and parts of continental Asia. Basically, the work it did would take several lifetimes to do manually, explains Dan Klein, who is an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Protolanguages (initial, parent languages) are extremely important in linguistics. Typically, the proto-language is not known directly. Basically you take a few related languages and reconstruct based on their similarities and deduce the parent language – this method is not always exact and doesn’t always work as planned – especially because such a thorough analysis takes a whole lot of time. But when you mix in the analyzing capacity of a computer, things change. Essentially, the program replicates what linguists do manually with 85% accuracy, several thousand times faster.

The program uses an algorithm known as the Markov chain Monte Carlo sampler, and it sorts through sets of words in different languages that share a common sound, history, and origin. The main idea, the holy graal is to go further and further down the tree of language evolution, find the protolanguages of protolanguages (so to say), the main few ones (or the main one? why not) from which all languages evolved.

Get more science news like this...

Join the ZME newsletter for amazing science news, features, and exclusive scoops. More than 40,000 subscribers can't be wrong.

   

Source

Tags: language
Mihai Andrei

Mihai Andrei

Andrei's background is in geophysics, and he's been fascinated by it ever since he was a child. Feeling that there is a gap between scientists and the general audience, he started ZME Science -- and the results are what you see today.

Follow ZME on social media

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
  • Coronavirus
  • News
  • Environment
  • Health
  • Future
  • Space
  • Feature
  • More

© 2007-2019 ZME Science - Not exactly rocket science. All Rights Reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Coronavirus
  • News
  • Environment
    • Climate
    • Animals
    • Renewable Energy
    • Eco tips
    • Environmental Issues
    • Green Living
  • Health
    • Alternative Medicine
    • Anatomy
    • Diseases
    • Genetics
    • Mind & Brain
    • Nutrition
  • Future
  • Space
  • Feature
    • Feature Post
    • Art
    • Great Pics
    • Design
    • Fossil Friday
    • AstroPicture
    • GeoPicture
    • Did you know?
    • Offbeat
  • More
    • About
    • The Team
    • Advertise
    • Contribute
    • Our stance on climate change
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact

© 2007-2019 ZME Science - Not exactly rocket science. All Rights Reserved.