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# Deciphering Undersegmented Ancient Scripts Using Phonetic Prior

**Authors:** [Jiaming Luo](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/jiaming-luo/); Frederik Hartmann; [Enrico Santus](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/enrico-santus/); [Regina Barzilay](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/regina-barzilay/); [Yuan Cao](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/yuan-cao/) · **Year:** 2021 · **Venue:** Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics, vol. 9, pp. 69–81 **Link:** [aclanthology.org/2021.tacl-1.5](https://aclanthology.org/2021.tacl-1.5/) · library `tacl-2021-luo-deciphering-undersegmented-ancient-scripts-phonetic` · **Licence:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) (ACL Anthology)

[**20** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W3129293584) openalex · 2026-10-18[**9** citations in our library](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/cited-by/tacl-2021-luo-deciphering-undersegmented-ancient-scripts-phonetic/) of the 140673 papers whose bibliographies we read[Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics](https://aclanthology.org/volumes/2021.tacl-1/)[licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

- [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/2021.tacl-1.5/)
- [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/2021.tacl-1.5.pdf)
- [DOI 10.1162/tacl_a_00354](https://doi.org/10.1162/tacl_a_00354)
- [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W3129293584)

**Authors (5)**

1. [Jiaming Luo](https://openalex.org/A5029740891) h 4 · 76 citations · 8 works
2. [Frederik Hartmann](https://openalex.org/A5003018532) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6649-5371) · h 6 · 102 citations · 32 works
3. [Enrico Santus](https://openalex.org/A5059288410) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7327-2731) · h 22 · 1593 citations · 121 works
4. [Regina Barzilay](https://openalex.org/A5010124873) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2921-8201) · h 93 · 36278 citations · 422 works
5. [Yuan Cao](https://openalex.org/A5101989491) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2495-4701) · h 28 · 9791 citations · 84 works

Citations and author metrics from openalex (2026-10-18); authors with the same name are not always told apart.

## What it is about

The paper asks how to match an unsegmented or undersegmented script against the vocabulary of a known language when the language family of the lost script is not known. The model jointly segments the text and aligns each matched span to a known stem with a monotonic, edit-distance-style alignment. Characters are embedded from their IPA features, so that similar sounds get similar vectors, and a penalty keeps the lost script from losing sounds (each lost symbol should map to one known sound). It also proposes a closeness measure: coverage of the lost text against a known language's vocabulary, plotted against confidence. On deciphered test cases the full model scores A@10 of 0.661 averaged over settings for Gothic (0.419 with no phonological knowledge), and it finds Proto-Germanic as the closest known language, with 75 percent A@10 even with no prior knowledge. On Iberian personal names it reaches 75 percent top-10 with full knowledge; the closeness measure does not single out Basque.

## Ideas

- I1. Closeness by coverage: for a text in one Aramaic variety, match its words against each other variety's stem list and plot coverage against match confidence. This gives an empirical test of which variety (`languages/arc-x-targum`, `languages/tmr`, `languages/jpa`) is nearest, and it can be checked against the known history.
- I2. Monotonic alignment with insertion penalty: align consonant skeletons of cognate forms with substitution, deletion and insertion costs, where insertion is penalised by a parameter alpha. Use it to match a word in one variety with its counterpart in another, and as a distance for `tools/ocrfix` repairs.
- I3. Sound-inventory check: require each consonant of a variety to correspond to a consistent consonant of the known language, and flag the cases where one letter maps to several sounds or where a sound disappears. Write the resulting table into [Script and phonology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/arc/script-phonology/).

## For Mova

I1 belongs in [The Aramaic family and the Jewish varieties](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/arc/family/) and in the closeness tests for the Aramaic varieties. I2 is an alignment routine for `tools/ocrfix` and for cognate lookup across `languages/arc`. I3 is a check for [Script and phonology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/arc/script-phonology/). The decipherment goal itself is outside Mova; the parts that transfer are the alignment, the closeness measure and the inventory check.

## Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [DOI 10.1162/tacl_a_00354](https://doi.org/10.1162/tacl_a_00354)

```
@article{luo2021deciphering,
  title = {{Deciphering Undersegmented Ancient Scripts Using Phonetic Prior}},
  author = {Luo, Jiaming and Hartmann, Frederik and Santus, Enrico and Barzilay, Regina and Cao, Yuan},
  journal = {Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics},
  year = {2021},
  doi = {10.1162/tacl\_a\_00354},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1162/tacl_a_00354}
}
```

- [← previous Noise-Robust Morphological Disambiguation for Dialectal Arabic](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/naacl-2018-zalmout-noise-robust-morphological-disambiguation-dialectal/)
- [next → Akkadian Treebank for early Neo-Assyrian Royal Inscriptions](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/treebanks-2020-luukko-akkadian-treebank-early-neo-assyrian/)
- [↑ back to Semitic languages](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/sem/)

## References

16 references, 1 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

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2. Taylor Berg-Kirkpatrick and Dan Klein. 2013. Decipherment with a million random restarts. In Proceedings of the 2013 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, pages 874–878. Association for Computational Linguistics. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Taylor+Berg%2DKirkpatrick+and+Dan+Klein%2E+2013%2E+Decipherment+with+a+million+random+restarts%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+2013+Conference+on+Empirical+Methods+in+Natural+Language+Processing%2C+pages+874%E2%80%93878%2E+Asso)
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5. Donald A. Ringe. 2017. From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic. Oxford. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Donald+A%2E+Ringe%2E+2017%2E+From+Proto%2DIndo%2DEuropean+to+Proto%2DGermanic%2E+Oxford%2E)
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8. Benjamin Snyder, Regina Barzilay, and Kevin Knight. 2010. A statistical model for lost language decipherment. In Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pages 1048–1057, Uppsala, Sweden. Association for Computational Linguistics. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198792581.001.0001 [↗](https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198792581.001.0001)
9. Jiaming Luo, Yuan Cao, and Regina Barzilay. 2019. Neural decipherment via minimum-cost flow: From ugaritic to linear b. In Proceedings of the 57th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pages 3146–3155, Florence, Italy. Association for Computational Linguistics. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Jiaming+Luo%2C+Yuan+Cao%2C+and+Regina+Barzilay%2E+2019%2E+Neural+decipherment+via+minimum%2Dcost+flow%3A+From+ugaritic+to+linear+b%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+57th+Annual+Meeting+of+the+Association+for+Computational+L) [our card](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/acl-2019-luo-neural-decipherment-minimum-cost-flow/)
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11. Noemı́ Moncunill Martı́ and others. 2017. Indigenous naming practices in the western Mediterranean: The case of Iberian. Studia Antiqua et Archaeologica, 23(1):7–20. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Noem%C4%B1%CC%81+Moncunill+Mart%C4%B1%CC%81+and+others%2E+2017%2E+Indigenous+naming+practices+in+the+western+Mediterranean%3A+The+case+of+Iberian%2E+Studia+Antiqua+et+Archaeologica%2C+23%281%29%3A7%E2%80%9320%2E)
12. Larry Trask. 2008. Etymological Dictionary of Basque. [http://www.bulgari-istoria](http://www.bulgari-istoria) -2010.com/Rechnici/baski-rechnik .pdf. [↗](http://www.bulgari-istoria)
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