07-28-2010, 12:54 AM
[quote name='ramana' date='04 August 2009 - 11:42 AM' timestamp='1249414452' post='100130']
From Hindu, 4 August 2009
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Indian-led team seeks to unlock secrets of Indus script
Washington (PTI): <b>A team of researchers, led by an Indian, is using mathematics and computer science to piece together information about the still-unknown script of the Indus Valley civilization, dating back to 4,000 years</b>.
The study shows <b>distinct patterns in the symbols' placement in sequences and creates a statistical model for the unknown language.
"The statistical model provides insights into the underlying grammatical structure of the Indus script," said Rajesh Rao,</b> the lead author of the study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
He said such a model can be valuable for decipherment, "because any meaning ascribed to a symbol must make sense in the context of other symbols that precede or follow it."
Nobody has yet been able to deciphere the Indus script. <b>The symbols are found on tiny seals, tablets and amulets, left by people inhabiting the Indus Valley from about 2600 to 1900 B.C. Each artifact is inscribed with a sequence that is typically five to six symbols long, said a release by the University of Washington.</b>
According to calculations, "the order of symbols is meaningful; taking one symbol from a sequence found on an artifact and changing its position produces a new sequence that has a much lower probability of belonging to the hypothetical language."
"The finding that the Indus script may have been versatile enough to represent different subject matter in <b>West Asia </b>is provocative. :?: This finding is hard to reconcile with the claim that the script merely represents religious or political symbols," said Mr. Rao, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Washington.
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Someone contact him and send him a link to this forum and page.
[/quote]
Good on Rao and his team! They're placing some of Panini's concepts on structure, grammar and semantics within the context of 21st Century science.
From Hindu, 4 August 2009
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Indian-led team seeks to unlock secrets of Indus script
Washington (PTI): <b>A team of researchers, led by an Indian, is using mathematics and computer science to piece together information about the still-unknown script of the Indus Valley civilization, dating back to 4,000 years</b>.
The study shows <b>distinct patterns in the symbols' placement in sequences and creates a statistical model for the unknown language.
"The statistical model provides insights into the underlying grammatical structure of the Indus script," said Rajesh Rao,</b> the lead author of the study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
He said such a model can be valuable for decipherment, "because any meaning ascribed to a symbol must make sense in the context of other symbols that precede or follow it."
Nobody has yet been able to deciphere the Indus script. <b>The symbols are found on tiny seals, tablets and amulets, left by people inhabiting the Indus Valley from about 2600 to 1900 B.C. Each artifact is inscribed with a sequence that is typically five to six symbols long, said a release by the University of Washington.</b>
According to calculations, "the order of symbols is meaningful; taking one symbol from a sequence found on an artifact and changing its position produces a new sequence that has a much lower probability of belonging to the hypothetical language."
"The finding that the Indus script may have been versatile enough to represent different subject matter in <b>West Asia </b>is provocative. :?: This finding is hard to reconcile with the claim that the script merely represents religious or political symbols," said Mr. Rao, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Washington.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Someone contact him and send him a link to this forum and page.
[/quote]
Good on Rao and his team! They're placing some of Panini's concepts on structure, grammar and semantics within the context of 21st Century science.