29-12-2020, 08:43 AM
I'm loving these adventures in abbreviation, guys.
I'm reminded of a viral email I received ~15y ago, which blew my mind:
It would appear that keeping the first and last letters of a word in their proper places goes a long way to preserving the readability of a jumbled word. Marco and Koen, the algorithms both of you just described for shortening long words (plus or minus jumbling them) adhere to this same rule. I'm skeptical that a similar abbreviating algorithm was used to create the VMs text, because the rigidity of character placement is particularly strong at the ends of vords. About two thirds of tokens end with y. Plus, reviewing You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. of Hidden Markov Modeling and its application to the VMs text, I'm reminded of Reddy and Knight's conclusion that the final character of a vord appears to be generated by a different process than the one that generates the rest of the vord. This seems more compatible with an abbreviation algorithm that levels word endings, rather than preserving them.
As critics of abbreviated Latin VMs theories (most memorably Stephen Carlson) have pointed out, an abbreviation method that effaces word endings is problematic for a plaintext language that carries a lot of its information in word endings, like Latin. I haven't tried chopping off or leveling the endings of long Latin words to see if readability is preserved, and my knowledge of Latin isn't good enough for me to do this experiment well. But I think it's worth considering that if used on a plaintext in a highly inflected language, this method of lossy compression could be hard to reliably decompress / reëxpand.
I'm reminded of a viral email I received ~15y ago, which blew my mind:
Quote:I cnduo't bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd waht I was rdnaieg. Unisg the icndeblire pweor of the hmuan mnid, aocdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whoutit a pboerlm. Tihs is bucseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey ltteer by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Aaznmig, huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghhuot slelinpg was ipmorantt! See if yuor fdreins can raed tihs too. (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)
It would appear that keeping the first and last letters of a word in their proper places goes a long way to preserving the readability of a jumbled word. Marco and Koen, the algorithms both of you just described for shortening long words (plus or minus jumbling them) adhere to this same rule. I'm skeptical that a similar abbreviating algorithm was used to create the VMs text, because the rigidity of character placement is particularly strong at the ends of vords. About two thirds of tokens end with y. Plus, reviewing You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. of Hidden Markov Modeling and its application to the VMs text, I'm reminded of Reddy and Knight's conclusion that the final character of a vord appears to be generated by a different process than the one that generates the rest of the vord. This seems more compatible with an abbreviation algorithm that levels word endings, rather than preserving them.
As critics of abbreviated Latin VMs theories (most memorably Stephen Carlson) have pointed out, an abbreviation method that effaces word endings is problematic for a plaintext language that carries a lot of its information in word endings, like Latin. I haven't tried chopping off or leveling the endings of long Latin words to see if readability is preserved, and my knowledge of Latin isn't good enough for me to do this experiment well. But I think it's worth considering that if used on a plaintext in a highly inflected language, this method of lossy compression could be hard to reliably decompress / reëxpand.
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