title: Entropic evidence for linguistic structure in the Indus script.
abstract: The script of the ancient Indus civilization remains undeciphered. The hypothesis that the script encodes language has recently been questioned. Here, we present evidence for the linguistic hypothesis by showing that the script's conditional entropy is closer to those of natural languages than various types of nonlinguistic systems.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA. rao@cs.washington.edu
authors.forename: Rajesh P N
authors.initials: RP
authors.lastname: Rao
authors.forename: Nisha
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Yadav
authors.forename: Mayank N
authors.initials: MN
authors.lastname: Vahia
authors.forename: Hrishikesh
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Joglekar
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Adhikari
authors.forename: Iravatham
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Mahadevan
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D001483:Base Sequence; D002889:Chromosomes, Human, Pair 2 / Q000235:genetics; D029968:Escherichia coli Proteins / Q000737:chemistry; D049690:History, Ancient; D006801:Humans; D007194:India; D007802:Language; D008037:Linguistics / Q000266:history*; D010154:Pakistan; D011381:Programming Languages; D014956:Writing / Q000266:history*
chemical_list: D029968:Escherichia coli Proteins