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Forensic Linguistics and Shorthand decoding
Dr Andrea Niniandrea.nini@manchester.ac.ukwww.andreanini.com
Decoding Dickens: Contexts, Inspirations, Approaches
23rd July 2021
To understand
The scientific study of how language works
(every aspect: society, mind, culture, ...)
Linguistics
Theoretical Applied
Clinical Education Forensic
Psycho-linguisticsSocio-linguisticsNeuro-linguistics…
The application of knowledge and
methods of Linguistics to
forensic problems
To solve real world problems
Forensic Linguistics
Study of the language of
the law
Study of language as
evidence
Study of language as
evidence
Interpretation of meanings Trademarks Forensic
phoneticsDisputed
authorship
Comparison Profiling
Decryption• Mathematics• You know if solution is
right• Adversarial
Decipherment• Linguistics• You don't know if
solution is right• Not adversarial
Oakes, M. P. (2014) Literary Detective Work on the Computer, Amsterdam, John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Transliterate the text to machine readable version• Break down to smallest possible unit
The Voynich Manuscript
Symbol
Letter(grapheme)
Cluster
Root/word
Combination of above
Bowles, H., 2018. Dickens's shorthand manuscripts. Dickens Quarterly, 35(1), pp.5-24.
Transliterate the text to machine readable version• Break down to smallest possible unit
Decipher known symbols
Does the unknown symbol appear in Gurney?• Assign possible mappings from Gurney or leave
blank
Add probability to unknown symbols using statistics of (Dickens’) language and knowledge of grammar
CorpusLinguistics
“In the case of ground, even if the reader correctly identifies the spelt word as < grnd >, he could read it equally well as grind, grinned and groaned. “
Bowles (2018: 10)
Bowles, H., 2018. Dickens's shorthand manuscripts. Dickens Quarterly, 35(1), pp.5-24.
General corpus of 19th century English Dicken’s corpus
Probability of word X given context Y
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Frequency
RankFunction words Hapax legomenon
Zipf’s law
• Most frequent, hapaxes, rate of occurrence
Frequency list of symbols
• List all examples in context
Concordance
• Which symbols tend to co-occur together more often than chance
Analysis of Collocations
• Find all combinations of symbols with a variable slot
Analysis of Constructions
Corpus linguistics techniques
Forensic Linguistics and Shorthand decoding
Dr Andrea Niniandrea.nini@manchester.ac.ukwww.andreanini.com
Decoding Dickens: Contexts, Inspirations, Approaches
23rd July 2021