A Novel Annotational Framework for the Analysis of Writing Systems

Abstract

We construct a system for representing graphemes as strings, from which the original grapheme may be reconstructed in its entirety. The utility of the system in representing scripts accurately is demonstrated with the analysis of select graphemes from various scripts. From this annotation, we offer various measures of script complexity and distance. We annotate various writing systems and analyze their script complexities, and compare the performance of various metrics at formalizing the notion of script affinity. Having found statistically significant results in the task of graphemic classification, we conclude that the theory proposed here meaningfully captures information about writing systems.