Design of an Offline Handwriting Recognition System Tested on the Bangla and Korean Scripts

This dissertation presents a flexible and robust offline handwriting recognition system which is tested on the Bangla and Korean scripts. Offline handwriting recognition is one of the most challenging and yet to be solved problems in machine learning. While a few popular scripts (like Latin) have received a lot of attention, many other widely used scripts (like Bangla) have seen very little progress. Features such as connectedness and vowels structured as diacritics make it a challenging script to recognize. A simple and robust design for offline recognition is presented which not only works reliably, but also can be used for almost any alphabetic writing system. The framework has been rigorously tested for Bangla and demonstrated how it can be transformed to apply to other scripts through experiments on the Korean script whose two-dimensional arrangement of characters makes it a challenge to recognize. The base of this design is a character spotting network which detects the location of different script elements (such as characters, diacritics) from an unsegmented word image. A transcript is formed from the detected classes based on their corresponding location information. This is the first reported lexicon-free offline recognition system for Bangla and achieves a Character Recognition Accuracy (CRA) of 94.8%. This is also one of the most flexible architectures ever presented. Recognition of Korean was achieved with a 91.2% CRA. Also, a powerful technique of autonomous tagging was developed which can drastically reduce the effort of preparing a dataset for any script. The combination of the character spotting method and the autonomous tagging brings the entire offline recognition problem very close to a singular solution. Additionally, a database named the Boise State Bangla Handwriting Dataset was developed. This is one of the richest offline datasets currently available for Bangla and this has been made publicly accessible to accelerate the research progress. Many other tools were developed and experiments were conducted to more rigorously validate this framework by evaluating the method against external datasets (CMATERdb 1.1.1, Indic Word Dataset and REID2019: Early Indian Printed Documents). Offline handwriting recognition is an extremely promising technology and the outcome of this research moves the field significantly ahead

Script Effects as the Hidden Drive of the Mind, Cognition, and Culture

This open access volume reveals the hidden power of the script we read in and how it shapes and drives our minds, ways of thinking, and cultures. Expanding on the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis (i.e., the idea that language affects the way we think), this volume proposes the “Script Relativity Hypothesis” (i.e., the idea that the script in which we read affects the way we think) by offering a unique perspective on the effect of script (alphabets, morphosyllabaries, or multi-scripts) on our attention, perception, and problem-solving. Once we become literate, fundamental changes occur in our brain circuitry to accommodate the new demand for resources. The powerful effects of literacy have been demonstrated by research on literate versus illiterate individuals, as well as cross-scriptal transfer, indicating that literate brain networks function differently, depending on the script being read. This book identifies the locus of differences between the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans, and between the East and the West, as the neural underpinnings of literacy. To support the “Script Relativity Hypothesis”, it reviews a vast corpus of empirical studies, including anthropological accounts of human civilization, social psychology, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, applied linguistics, second language studies, and cross-cultural communication. It also discusses the impact of reading from screens in the digital age, as well as the impact of bi-script or multi-script use, which is a growing trend around the globe. As a result, our minds, ways of thinking, and cultures are now growing closer together, not farther apart. ; Examines the origin, emergence, and co-evolution of written language, the human mind, and culture within the purview of script effects Investigates how the scripts we read over time shape our cognition, mind, and thought patterns Provides a new outlook on the four representative writing systems of the world Discusses the consequences of literacy for the functioning of the min

Uncovering the myth of learning to read Chinese characters: phonetic, semantic, and orthographic strategies used by Chinese as foreign language learners

Oral Session - 6A: Lexical modeling: no. 6A.3Chinese is considered to be one of the most challenging orthographies to be learned by non-native speakers, in particular, the character. Chinese character is the basic reading unit that converges sound, form and meaning. The predominant type of Chinese character is semantic-phonetic compound that is composed of phonetic and semantic radicals, giving the clues of the sound and meaning, respectively. Over the last two decades, psycholinguistic research has made significant progress in specifying the roles of phonetic and semantic radicals in character processing among native Chinese speakers …postprin

(Dis)connections between specific language impairment and dyslexia in Chinese

Poster Session: no. 26P.40Specific language impairment (SLI) and dyslexia describe language-learning impairments that occur in the absence of a sensory, cognitive, or psychosocial impairment. SLI is primarily defined by an impairment in oral language, and dyslexia by a deficit in the reading of written words. SLI and dyslexia co-occur in school-age children learning English, with rates ranging from 17% to 75%. For children learning Chinese, SLI and dyslexia also co-occur. Wong et al. (2010) first reported on the presence of dyslexia in a clinical sample of 6- to 11-year-old school-age children with SLI. The study compared the reading-related cognitive skills of children with SLI and dyslexia (SLI-D) with 2 groups of children …postprin

The Nature of Writing – A Theory of Grapholinguistics [book cover]

Cover illustration: Purgatory: Canto VII – The Rule of the Mountain from A Typographic Dante (2008) by Barrie Tullett (also displayed in Barrie Tullett, Typewriter Art: A Modern Anthology, London: Laurence King Publishing, 2014, p. 167). With kind permission by Barrie Tullett. The text is taken from Dante. The Divine Comedy, translated by Dorothy L. Sayers, Harmondsworth­Middlesex: The Penguin Classics, 1949. On the lower part of the illustration, one can read the concluding verses of the Canto: But now the poet was going on before; “Forward!” said he; “look how the sun doth stand Meridian­high, while on the Western shore Night sets her foot upon Morocco’s strand.

Phonological awareness and word reading development in Acehnese-Indonesian bilinguals learning English as a third language

This study investigates the phonological awareness and multi-literacy acquisitions of Indonesian-speaking children with a varied level of Acehnese spoken language experience. The study specifically looks for the possibility of metalinguistic awareness benefit on the level of phonology by having Acehnese as a second spoken language after Indonesian, and the possibility of transfer of this phonological awareness into the third language English which is learnt formally at school as a foreign language. The other purposes of the study are to examine the roles of both Acehnese and English oral language vocabulary in the Acehnese and English word reading performances, respectively, once the L1 Indonesian word-reading skill is controlled.Forty-six 7-year-old children from a primary school in Banda Aceh, Indonesia were given three vocabulary tests, each in Indonesian, Acehnese and English, and were assessed for their daily (passive and active) spoken language use in Indonesian and Acehnese through a parental questionnaire. The participants were also assessed for their non-verbal intelligence and phonological awareness abilities that includes phoneme deletion, syllable deletion, onset oddity and rime oddity in the three languages. Finally, the participants were assessed for their Indonesian, Acehnese and English word reading abilities through a list of 30 words arranged in increasing difficulty level. The results of the study show that when Indonesian literacy skills is not controlled, having exposure to spoken Acehnese at home does not facilitate literacy and phonological awareness skills in Acehense, Indonesian or English. Once the Indonesian word reading skill and the level of intelligence are controlled, the Acehnese spoken language skills (Acehnese active use and Acehnese receptive vocabulary) is found to significantly predict the Acehnese word reading. The role of English vocabulary in English reading score is indicated to be significant even before the Indonesian literacy skill is controlled, but the significance level of L1 Indonesian word reading is still higher than the L3 English vocabulary skill in English word reading. The absence of L2 Acehnese orthographic knowledge, the L1 Indonesian orthographic dominance, as well as the L3 English opaque orthography are the primary causes of why no Indonesian-Acehnese bilingualism benefit found in the children’s L3 English phonological awareness and word reading skills, and why Indonesian and English proficiency levels are more important for increasing the phonological awareness.This study contributes to early literacy teaching and learning in Aceh-Indonesian context, especially the teaching and learning to read in English as a foreign language. My study provides evidence that among multilingual children, the phonological processing skill can be elevated through teaching the orthographic knowledge of all the languages