In this study, we study language change in Chinese Biji by using a classification task: classifying Ancient Chinese texts by time periods. Specifically, we focus on a unique genre in classical Chinese literature: Biji (literally notebook'' or brush n
otes''), i.e., collections of anecdotes, quotations, etc., anything authors consider noteworthy, Biji span hundreds of years across many dynasties and conserve informal language in written form. For these reasons, they are regarded as a good resource for investigating language change in Chinese (Fang, 2010). In this paper, we create a new dataset of 108 Biji across four dynasties. Based on the dataset, we first introduce a time period classification task for Chinese. Then we investigate different feature representation methods for classification. The results show that models using contextualized embeddings perform best. An analysis of the top features chosen by the word n-gram model (after bleaching proper nouns) confirms that these features are informative and correspond to observations and assumptions made by historical linguists.
This paper describes the GLAUx project (the Greek Language Automated''), an ongoing effort to develop a large long-term diachronic corpus of Greek, covering sixteen centuries of literary and non-literary material annotated with NLP methods. After pro
viding an overview of related corpus projects and discussing the general architecture of the corpus, it zooms in on a number of larger methodological issues in the design of historical corpora. These include the encoding of textual variants, handling extralinguistic variation and annotating linguistic ambiguity. Finally, the long- and short-term perspectives of this project are discussed.
In this paper, we aim to address the challenges surrounding the translation of ancient Chinese text: (1) The linguistic gap due to the difference in eras results in translations that are poor in quality, and (2) most translations are missing the cont
extual information that is often very crucial to understanding the text. To this end, we improve upon past translation techniques by proposing the following: We reframe the task as a multi-label prediction task where the model predicts both the translation and its particular era. We observe that this helps to bridge the linguistic gap as chronological context is also used as auxiliary information. We validate our framework on a parallel corpus annotated with chronology information and show experimentally its efficacy in producing quality translation outputs. We release both the code and the data for future research.
This paper presents the work in progress toward the creation of a family of WordNets for Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, and Latin. Building on previous attempts in the field, we elaborate these efforts bridging together WordNet relational semantics with th
eories of meaning from Cognitive Linguistics. We discuss some of the innovations we have introduced to the WordNet architecture, to better capture the polysemy of words, as well as Indo-European language family-specific features. We conclude the paper framing our work within the larger picture of resources available for ancient languages and showing that WordNet-backed search tools have the potential to re-define the kinds of questions that can be asked of ancient language corpora.
Most undeciphered lost languages exhibit two characteristics that pose significant decipherment challenges: (1) the scripts are not fully segmented into words; (2) the closest known language is not determined. We propose a decipherment model that han
dles both of these challenges by building on rich linguistic constraints reflecting consistent patterns in historical sound change. We capture the natural phonological geometry by learning character embeddings based on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The resulting generative framework jointly models word segmentation and cognate alignment, informed by phonological constraints. We evaluate the model on both deciphered languages (Gothic, Ugaritic) and an undeciphered one (Iberian). The experiments show that incorporating phonetic geometry leads to clear and consistent gains. Additionally, we propose a measure for language closeness which correctly identifies related languages for Gothic and Ugaritic. For Iberian, the method does not show strong evidence supporting Basque as a related language, concurring with the favored position by the current scholarship.1
The city of "Alalakh" was the center of an Kingdom in the northwestern corner of
Syria during the 18-14 centuries BC , and enjoy cultural and commercial importance , and
built important link with Anatolia .
Archaeological Excavations at the site(1
937-1949) revealed about 900 written text
of cuneiform and Akkadian language , it helps to know the nature of the political,
administrative and economic situation in Alalakh, and its foreign relations .
Among them a treaty held by the King Idrimi ( 15th century BC) with Pilia the
King of Kizzuwatna a neighbors Kingdom to the north , in the regions of Cilicia .
It is one of dozens of treaties concluded between the kingdoms of the ancient Near
East, major and minor, since the third millennium BC until the first. The Treaty is
especially important in several aspects, most notably that pinned between the two
kingdoms adjacent were faced with challenges affecting their existence and sovereignty of
both.
Old East man had brought to perfection a lot of Art works, including many of what on his mind and imagination of visions and thoughts.
Superstitious Creatures which were formed by mixing a group of
creatures with each others were one of his mental
and fired
imagination achievements
The releif and other Art works contain monuments, like statoes
paintings, jewelry, ivory, bones, wood and athermaterials which man used to achieve these Art pieces.
In the Assyrian Civilization, winged bulls appeared with human
crowned heads (Lamasu). These wonderful sculptures stood on the gates and palaces and castles entrances, and through their position, they expressed Assyria’s greatness and their kings power. They spread terrify and horror in the enemies hearts, same as magic, they also were support to the entrances because of their big stone mass.
