通过模拟古希腊手稿损毁,学习跨越千年的字母表征。
Learning Diachronic Representations of Ancient Greek Letterforms

- 用动态相似性加权对比损失增强嵌入
- 在三个不同时期数据集上实现高识别率
- 适合历史文本分析与数字人文研究者
跨世纪手写体变化下的鲁棒表征学习是时间演化表征学习的关键挑战。以使用时间最长的书写系统之一——古希腊文为例,我们构建了三个数据集:用于训练的Hell-Char(公元前3世纪至前1世纪),以及用于评估的PaLit-Char(公元2–5世纪)和Med-Char(公元9–14世纪)。针对符号变异、数据稀缺和系统性退化问题,提出:基于动态估计类间相似性的加权监督对比损失,以及模拟真实手稿损毁的缺失驱动增强方法。采用这些策略训练的轻量CNN与预训练ResNet均取得优异识别性能,其嵌入比PCA或通用预训练模型更清晰地区分字符类别。这些嵌入支持聚类、风格子群识别,并可生成原型图像以可视化历时演变与过渡形。结果表明,尊重内在字间关系并结合领域知识的损坏增强,能获得鲁棒且可解释的表征,为稀疏、时变、噪声条件下的表征学习提供可迁移范式。代码与数据见:https://github.com/ipavlopoulos/diachronic-greek-letterforms。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Learning representations that remain robust across centuries of variation in handwriting is a key challenge in diachronic representation learning. Taking one of the longest continuously used writing systems, ancient Greek, as a case study, we introduce three datasets for diachronic representation learning: Hell-Char, a curated training set spanning the 3rd-1st centuries BCE, and two evaluation sets, PaLit-Char (2nd-5th c. CE) and Med-Char (9th-14th c. CE). To address the challenges of symbolic variation, scarce data, and systematic degradation, we propose: a similarity-weighted supervised contrastive loss that biases embeddings using dynamically estimated inter-class similarities, and a lacuna-driven augmentation scheme that simulates realistic manuscript corruptions. Trained with these strategies, both a lightweight CNN and a pretrained ResNet achieve strong recognition performance and produce embeddings that more coherently separate character classes than PCA or generic pretrained models. These embeddings enable clustering, identification of stylistic subgroups, and construction of prototype images that visualize diachronic evolution and transitional letterforms. Our results demonstrate that respecting intrinsic inter-letter relationships and augmenting with domain-informed corruptions yield robust, interpretable representations, offering a transferable paradigm for representation learning under scarce, temporally evolving, and noisy conditions. Code and data available at: https://github.com/ipavlopoulos/diachronic-greek-letterforms.
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