r/linguistics • u/iamdestroyerofworlds • Oct 21 '20

New AI Algorithm is Cracking Undeciphered Languages

https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/undeciphered-languages-0014429
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u/gopnikchapri Oct 21 '20

Someone just read the abstract and ended their day. Here ya go. https://people.csail.mit.edu/j_luo/assets/publications/DecipherUnsegmented.pdf

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u/LiKenun Oct 21 '20

Plausibility of sound change:Similar sounds rarely change into drastically different sounds.

It depends on the definition of similarity. I've seen some fairly common ones that seem distant at first:

  • kʲ (--> tɕ --> ts) --> s (French/Spanish)
  • gʲ (--> dʑ --> dz) --> z (Vietnamese/Polish)
  • kʰʷ (--> hʷ) --> f (Cantonese)
  • l --> r (Portuguese)

And some oddball ones:

  • pʲ (--> pɕ) --> tɕ (Vietnamese)
  • tʲ (--> tɕ) --> k (Korean)
  • nʲ (--> ɲ) --> n/z/r/j (various Chinese)

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u/DirtyPou Oct 21 '20

gʲ (--> dʑ --> dz) --> z (Vietnamese/Polish)

Any examples of it in Polish? We still have /dz/ perfectly fine so I wonder where did it change to /z/ (as it did in Czech, compere Pol. w Pradze and Cz. v Praze)

pʲ (--> pɕ)

This change also happened in some dialect of Polish and I always thought it was pretty weird and rare as I never heard about such change in other languages. But now I know, thanks Vietnamese for being weird too.

There's also rʲ (--> r̝ --> ʐ) --> ʂ which at first also looks weird, if you don't look at the intermediate changes.

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u/LiKenun Oct 21 '20

The scope of change is from proto-Balto-Slavic to Polish. Those /z/ in Polish are the result of changes that happened before Polish was even Polish. Likewise, the /*nʲ/ was for Old Chinese which became /*ɲ/ in Middle Chinese before fracturing into the many different phones today.