{"id":276853,"date":"2021-06-16T21:19:46","date_gmt":"2021-06-16T18:19:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/complexity-holds-steady-as-writing-systems-evolve\/"},"modified":"2021-06-16T21:19:46","modified_gmt":"2021-06-16T18:19:46","slug":"complexity-holds-steady-as-writing-systems-evolve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/complexity-holds-steady-as-writing-systems-evolve\/","title":{"rendered":"#Complexity holds steady as writing systems evolve"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Complexity holds steady as writing systems evolve<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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\n Letters are under pressure to simplify, but also have to carry information. Credit: Oliver Morin
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A new paper in the journal Cognition<\/i> examines the visual complexity of written language and how that complexity has evolved.<\/p>\n


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Using computational techniques to analyze more than 47,000 different characters from 133 living and extinct script<\/a>s, co-authors Helena Miton of the Santa Fe Institute and Oliver Morin of the Max Planck Institute for the Science<\/a> of Human History, addressed several questions around why and how the characters of different writing systems vary in how complex they appear.<\/p>\n

“When we started this project, we wanted to test whether you find a general<\/a> simplification of characters over time,” Miton says. “Do scripts simplify their characters as they spend more time exposed to evolutionary pressures from the humans who are learning them and using them?”<\/p>\n

We interact with most types of writing through our visual system, so the characters and scripts that make up the hundreds of writing systems humans have used through history are limited to and optimized for the way our brains process visual information. Part of that optimization, write the authors, is the graphic complexity of the characters in a script.<\/p>\n

Morin illustrates this in a Twitter thread<\/a>, offering an image of two characters, one apparently more complex, with more detail and contours, than the other. He writes, “Why care about this? Because your brain does. Simpler letters are easier and faster to process.” He goes on, “Any small improvements in processing speed can accumulate into big-time gains for readers. Letters are under pressure to simplify, but also have to carry information.”<\/p>\n


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