Anatomy of Bengali Letterforms: A Semiotic Study
01 Jan 2015-pp 237-247
TL;DR: In this article, the structural grid lines, anatomical features and parameters of Latin letterforms have been analyzed using syntagmatic and paradigmatic analysis, and the analysis has been carried out using two techniques, repeated forms and unique forms of letters.
Abstract: The anatomy of letterforms defines the structural formation of letters. The study is based on semiotic approach. The methods used here are Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic analysis. The anatomy is developed through analysis based on the work on Latin letterforms from three different aspect which are structural grid lines, anatomical features and parameters. This syntagmatic analysis is yielded in identification of various structural features of letterforms like terminal, bowl, blob, stem, dot or nukta, ascender and descender. The analysis has been carried out using two techniques, repeated forms and unique forms of letters. The paradigmatic analysis discusses the comparative study of structure and feature of letterforms across different typefaces such as Lohit Bengali, Vrinda, Solaimanlipi and etc. The analysis offers distinct anatomical nomenclatures after analyzing paradigmatic transformations. Further the study categorizes the letterforms according to the appearance of common features.
Citations
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TL;DR: A novel scheme for recognising Bengali handwritten consonants by exploring the primitive set of strokes that construct the characters, based on mathematical morphology, which runs reasonably fast and doesn't require any kind of training.
Abstract: The present work demonstrates a novel scheme for recognising Bengali handwritten consonants by exploring the primitive set of strokes that construct the characters. The Bengali consonants are first manually analysed in order to decompose them into their constituent pattern primitives. Once an exhaustive list of such primitives are prepared, a scheme based on mathematical morphology is devised to identify their existence in the scanned images of the handwritten characters. The characters are identified on the basis of the detected set of primitives. Although, the scheme involves multiple iterations, it runs reasonably fast and doesn't require any kind of training.
1 citations
Cites background or methods from "Anatomy of Bengali Letterforms: A S..."
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TL;DR: A novel scheme for recognising Bengali handwritten vowels using mathematical morphology where the characters are first categorised on the basis of their anatomical features, which does not need training samples to work.
Abstract: The present paper describes the development of a novel scheme for recognising Bengali handwritten vowels using mathematical morphology where the characters are first categorised on the basis of their anatomical features. The scanned images of the characters are passed through a weighted decision tree which is designed to analyse the feature set present in them. Based on the detected features, the algorithms easily recognise the individual characters. The extraction of some features has been carried out by generating the curvature scale spaces for the characters. The treatment is performed on scanned binary images of the handwritten characters to detect anatomical features such as ‘bowl’, ‘lobe’ and ‘arm’. The scheme developed here is very fast and it does not need training samples to work.
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TL;DR: The result indicates that there is an active involvement of letter-parts and features in the letter identification process, and the list of common and distinctive letter features has been prepared to guide the type designers.
Abstract: The elementary unit of letter construction is the basic anatomical features of letterforms. The letter identification is a process of decoding and encoding of the anatomical information of the letters. They are the fundamental components of letter identification. This paper explains the process of Bengali letter identification and reveals the crucial anatomical features for design purposes. Here, an eye-tracking study has been conducted to identify the involvement of letter features in reading. In order to reveal the letter features, we exposed the letters under low contrast conditions to establish the consequence of anatomical features. The objective of the experiment is to identify the important letters features during the reading process that aids the letter identification task. A total number of six participants had performed the task under low contrast condition, and data was captured using an eye-tracking device. The aim of the paper is to understand the role of anatomical features in the letter identification process, so that such information can be useful for the Type designers. Type designers are designers who design typefaces and develop fonts for everyday use. The saccades, fixation, and heat-signature data from eye-tracking study have provided two major sets of information—(1) a list of letter features (individually) involved in the letter identification process, (2) a list of common and unique letter features across all Bengali letters. The result indicates that there is an active involvement of letter-parts and features in the letter identification process, and the list of common and distinctive letter features has been prepared to guide the type designers.
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TL;DR: In this article , an individual with dysgraphia while writing Bengali and restricted to letters which required initiation with a circular loop was described, which was not due to the default presence of a bud in the letter, rather due to his writing style.
Abstract: We read with interest the report by Ganguly et al, regarding a case with pattern-specific dysgraphia. This case is important as it expands the limited spectrum of reports pertaining to the domain of difficulties in grapheme generation, particularly related to probable abnormalities in effector specific motor programs. The case by Ganguly et al, describes an individual with dysgraphia predominantly while writing Bengali and restricted to letters which required initiation with a circular loop. This is similar to our reported case who incidentally also had a predominant difficulty with Bengali script with dysgraphia restricted to a single letter with a circular loop at initiation. This report with its similarities and variations from our case, implores us to ask a myriad of pertinent questions which are associated with linguistics, writing systems and the anatomy of graphemes. A standard grapheme is formed of multiple segments such as the bud, knot, stem, dot, etc. It is imperative to understand that the style of writing has a significant bearing on the reported abnormality. The video provided by Ganguly et al, demonstrates that their case wrote the majority of the letters with a predominant initial bud whereas our case only wrote a single letter with the bud. Perhaps if our case had a different handwriting, we might have observed pattern rather than letter specificity. This suggests the possible need to elicit the pattern specificity by making the patient write in a different style. Another important question is why the two reports of this nature are related to Bengali script. This language is part of the Indic/Brahmic group of scripts, and almost all included languages have a similar structure for graphemes. It is rather perplexing that there are no reports from other languages, which have more buds, knots and loop. The patient in the case by Ganguly et al, had difficulty while writing the letter “c” in English and this was not due to default presence of a bud in the letter, rather due to his style of writing the letter. This fact once again highlights the role of the pattern in grapheme generation. However, it would be interesting to know if a forcible change in handwriting or if writing with a different body part such as the foot would alter the dysgraphia. The underlying abnormality is considered to be the effector specific motor program that encodes the muscle activation pattern for each grapheme. This is perhaps a valid reason for a single letter but is uncertain if the same can hold true for abnormality in a specific pattern which is present across multiple graphemes. Finally, the most pertinent question is why the initial loop, ie, the bud or knot? Why not another aspect of the grapheme, or toward the middle or the end. Although there are no clear answers to any of these questions, and this may not particularly be a disabling disability, it is an intriguing field to explore which deserves further evaluation in future reports.
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TL;DR: The authors explored the original letterforms that existed in various historical articles such as rock inscriptions, copper plate inscriptions and coins and Xaansi (or Saanchi) tree bark manuscripts found in the region of Assam originated from different time periods, by adopting an exploratory approach.
Abstract: Assamese language has its own letterform or script. The evolution of the script from historical inscription to modern machinery driven form experiences many changes. The script has continuously progressed structurally as well as aesthetically to suit for machine reproduction and future demand from its original handmade manuscript phase. This study tries to explore the original letterforms that existed in various historical articles such as rock inscriptions, copper plate inscriptions, coins and Xaansi (or Saanchi) tree bark manuscripts found in the region of Assam originated from different time periods, by adopting an exploratory approach. The study also attempts to compare the historical letterforms with modern letterforms and try to establish distinct differences evolved during the progression period. Further the study attempts to address the scope of designing new typeface for Assamese script with unique identity traced from historical evidences which has not been explored till now.
References
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TL;DR: It is found that efficiency for letter identification is independent of duration, overall contrast, and eccentricity, and only weakly dependent on size, suggesting that letters are identified by a similar computation across this wide range of viewing conditions.
Abstract: Seeking to understand how people recognize objects, we have examined how they identify letters. We expected this 26-way classification of familiar forms to challenge the popular notion of independent feature detection ("probability summation"), but find instead that this theory parsimoniously accounts for our results. We measured the contrast required for identification of a letter briefly presented in visual noise. We tested a wide range of alphabets and scripts (English, Arabic, Armenian, Chinese, Devanagari, Hebrew, and several artificial ones), three- and five-letter words, and various type styles, sizes, contrasts, durations, and eccentricities, with observers ranging widely in age (3 to 68) and experience (none to fluent). Foreign alphabets are learned quickly. In just three thousand trials, new observers attain the same proficiency in letter identification as fluent readers. Surprisingly, despite this training, the observers-like clinical letter-by-letter readers-have the same meager memory span for random strings of these characters as observers seeing them for the first time. We compare performance across tasks and stimuli that vary in difficulty by pitting the human against the ideal observer, and expressing the results as efficiency. We find that efficiency for letter identification is independent of duration, overall contrast, and eccentricity, and only weakly dependent on size, suggesting that letters are identified by a similar computation across this wide range of viewing conditions. Efficiency is also independent of age and years of reading. However, efficiency does vary across alphabets and type styles, with more complex forms yielding lower efficiencies, as one might expect from Gestalt theories of perception. In fact, we find that efficiency is inversely proportional to perimetric complexity (perimeter squared over "ink" area) and nearly independent of everything else. This, and the surprisingly fixed ratio of detection and identification thresholds, indicate that identifying a letter is mediated by detection of about 7 visual features.
371 citations
"Anatomy of Bengali Letterforms: A S..." refers background in this paper
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TL;DR: It is provided the first empirical evidence that line terminations are the most important features for letter identification, and it is proposed that these small features, represented at several spatial scales, help readers to discriminate among visually similar letters.
Abstract: The determination of the visual features mediating letter identification has a long-standing history in cognitive science. Researchers have proposed many sets of letter features as important for letter identification, but no such sets have yet been derived directly from empirical data. In the study reported here, we applied the Bubbles technique to reveal directly which areas at five different spatial scales are efficient for the identification of lowercase and uppercase Arial letters. We provide the first empirical evidence that line terminations are the most important features for letter identification. We propose that these small features, represented at several spatial scales, help readers to discriminate among visually similar letters.
91 citations
"Anatomy of Bengali Letterforms: A S..." refers background in this paper
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TL;DR: To assess grouping in object recognition, letters are made out of grating patches and the effects of three different kinds of shape perturbation on letter identifiability are predicted by a single measure of goodness of continuation, showing that letter identification obeys the Gestalt law of good continuation.
Abstract: The Gestalt psychologists reported a set of laws describing how vision groups elements to recognize objects. The Gestalt laws “prescribe for us what we are to recognize ‘as one thing’” (Kohler, 1920). Were they right? Does object recognition involve grouping? Tests of the laws of grouping have been favourable, but mostly assessed only detection, not identification, of the compound object. The grouping of elements seen in the detection experiments with lattices and “snakes in the grass” is compelling, but falls far short of the vivid everyday experience of recognizing a familiar, meaningful, named thing, which mediates the ordinary identification of an object. Thus, after nearly a century, there is hardly any evidence that grouping plays a role in ordinary object recognition. To assess grouping in object recognition, we made letters out of grating patches and measured threshold contrast for identifying these letters in visual noise as a function of perturbation of grating orientation, phase, and offset. We...
44 citations
"Anatomy of Bengali Letterforms: A S..." refers background in this paper
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TL;DR: This overview examines the historical development of mechanizing Indian scripts and the computer processing of Indian languages and the challenges involved in their design and in exploiting their structural similarity that lead to a unified solution.
Abstract: This overview examines the historical development of mechanizing Indian scripts and the computer processing of Indian languages. While examining possible solutions, the author describes the challenges involved in their design and in exploiting their structural similarity that lead to a unified solution. The focus is on the Devanagari script and Hindi language, and on the technological solutions for processing them.
39 citations
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