| Challenge: | Oracle bone script (OBS) documents are the oldest continuously-used writing system in the world and are important for linguistic and historical research. |
| Approach: | They construct an information system for OBS to symbolize, serialize, and store OBS data at the character-level using efficient databases and retrieval modules. |
| Outcome: | The proposed system symbolizes, serializes, and stores OBS data at the character-level, based on efficient databases and retrieval modules. |
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| Challenge: | Existing methods for deciphering ancient Chinese Oracle Bone Script (OBS) treat deciphering as a closed-set image recognition problem, which fails to bridge the "interpretation gap" . |
| Approach: | They propose a vision-language model framework that integrates a VLM and an LLM to automate a reasoning chain of component identification and knowledge retrieval. |
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Writing System and Speaker Metadata for 2,800+ Language Varieties (2022.lrec-1)
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| Challenge: | Currently, language technologies are easily available in only a small minority of the world's 7,000+ language varieties. |
| Approach: | They propose to use an open-source dataset to provide the writing system(s) for each of the 2,800+ languages used in the world today and an estimated speaker count for each. |
| Outcome: | The dataset provides the attested writing system(s) for each of these 2,800+ varieties, as well as an estimated speaker count for each variety. |
ACSE: An Ancient Character Semantic-Aware Embedding for Large Language Models (2026.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Existing studies on pre-Qin documents are insufficient to understand ancient characters . ancient characters have a low level of digitization and training corpora are extremely scarce . |
| Approach: | They propose a semantic-aware embedding for ancient Chinese characters that integrates glyphs and lexicality into modern Chinese semantic space. |
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A Dataset of Mycenaean Linear B Sequences (2020.lrec-1)
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| Challenge: | a dataset of Mycenaean Linear B sequences is presented . the dataset contains sequences of Mycean words and ideograms according to the rules of the Mycensean Greek language in the Late Bronze Age. |
| Approach: | They propose to collect Mycenaean Linear B sequences from the Mycensean inscriptions . they exploit the structure of the entire language, not just the Mycean vocabulary . |
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Multi-Modal Multi-Granularity Tokenizer for Chu Bamboo Slips (2025.coling-main)
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| Challenge: | Using a multi-modal multi-granularity tokenizer, we analyze ancient Chinese scripts . a large proportion of the characters in ancient Chinese are rare or undeciphered . |
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Extensions to Brahmic script processing within the Nisaba library: new scripts, languages and utilities (2022.lrec-1)
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| Challenge: | a brahmic script is used to record endangered languages such as Dogri and Bengali for low-resource languages such that do not require visual normalization. |
| Approach: | They propose to extend Brahmic script functionality within the Nisaba library of finite-state script normalization and processing utilities. |
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BDPROTO: A Database of Phonological Inventories from Ancient and Reconstructed Languages (L18-1)
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| Challenge: | BDPROTO is a database of phonological inventory data from 137 ancient and reconstructed languages. |
| Approach: | They present a database of phonological inventory data from 137 ancient and reconstructed languages. |
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Finite-state script normalization and processing utilities: The Nisaba Brahmic library (2021.eacl-demos)
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| Challenge: | a library for low-level processing of brahmic scripts is available for free. |
| Approach: | They propose an open-source library for efficient low-level processing of ten major South Asian Brahmic scripts. |
| Outcome: | The proposed library supports low-level processing of ten major south Asian Brahmic scripts. |
Sequence Models for Document Structure Identification in an Undeciphered Script (2022.emnlp-main)
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| Challenge: | a systematic analysis of “header” signs in proto-Elamite provides new evidence for their existence . experts have hypothesized that headers are a sign which qualifies transactions . |
| Approach: | They provide unsupervised neural and statistical sequence modeling techniques to identify “header” signs in proto-Elamite, an undeciphered script from 3100-2900 BCE. |
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AGILe: The First Lemmatizer for Ancient Greek Inscriptions (2022.lrec-1)
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| Challenge: | Existing models for ancient Greek inscriptions are not performant on epigraphic data due to language differences . a lemmatizer for ancient inscription data can enable meaningful generalizations, we show . |
| Approach: | They propose to train an automatic lemmatizer for ancient Greek inscriptions with 80% accuracy . they also show that existing models are not performant on epigraphic data . |
| Outcome: | The proposed model achieves above 80% accuracy on epigraphic data, and makes it available to the community. |