用生成系统证明:语言统计特征未必能区分语言与非语言符号。
On the Non-Specificity of Statistical Measures Used in Script Decipherment

- 构建3000个有语义但无发音的符号系统,模拟非语言结构。
- 该系统在54种统计指标上均表现如印度河文字,无法区分。
- 适合研究符号解读、统计推断可靠性或批判性思维者阅读。
统计规律常被当作未破译符号系统编码语言的证据,以印度河文字为例。此类推断依赖于特异性:所观察到的结果在可能的非语言结构中应属异常。本文通过自建的生成符号系统SIGIL进行验证,其核心语料含3,000个文本,具有明确的组合语义但无音值。评估前预设文献清单收录54种方法,并设定可复现的标准。结果表明,该系统在重复性、方向不对称性及词汇分布等测试中,各项指标均与印度河文字一致。熵、频率、位置、预测性、分类器及网络等测量值也重现了典型的印度河文字特征。进一步的序列解码压力测试显示,对英语、梵语和泰米尔语均可实现高词典覆盖率,但分组保留下降且密钥不稳定,揭示覆盖率本身无法确认真实解码。该构造不判定印度河文字内容,但表明所测统计量可识别结构却无法特指语言,故不能独立证明其为语言编码。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Statistical regularities are routinely offered as evidence that undeciphered sign systems encode language; the Indus script debate is the canonical example. Any such inference rests on specificity: the reported outcome must be unusual among plausible structured non-languages. We test that premise constructively with SIGIL, a purpose-built generative emblem system whose 3,000-text core corpus carries explicit compositional meanings although no sign has a phonological value. A literature registry compiled in advance of evaluation records 54 methods and admits a method to exact scoring when both the published Indus outcome and a source-defined decision rule can be reproduced. SIGIL receives the same category as the Indus corpus on every criterion scored this way, across repetition, directional-asymmetry, and lexical-distribution tests. Declared reconstructions of entropy, frequency, positional, predictive, classifier, and network measures reproduce the familiar Indus-like signatures as well. A sequential decipherment stress test then reaches high dictionary coverage for English, Sanskrit, and Tamil on the same corpus, while grouped held-out declines and unstable keys reveal how little that coverage identifies. The construction does not decide what the Indus signs encode: it shows that the evaluated measures detect organization without being specific to language, and therefore cannot, on their own, establish encoded speech.
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