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So Miyagawa

University of Tsukuba, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty Member

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My homepage: https://somiyagawa.com/, English: https://somiyagawa.de/
I am an Egyptologist, Coptologist, and Digital Humanist, working at a university in Japan as an associate professor.
Supervisors: Heike Behlmer, Alin Suciu, Yutaka Yoshida, Yukinori Takubo, Shuntaro Tida, Kazuhiko Yoshida, and Adam Alvah Catt
Address: Yoshida-Honmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, 606-8501

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WORKSHOPS AND CONFERENCES ORGANISED by So Miyagawa

1st "Egyptology meets IT" Workshop on 18.11.2016

by So Miyagawa and Camilla Di Biase-Dyson

Linguistics & Philology by So Miyagawa

Shenoute, Besa and the Bible: Digital Text Reuse Analysis of Selected Monastic Writings from Egypt

SUB Göttingen, 2022

沖縄語のデジタル語彙資源の構築 [Making Digital Lexicon of Okinawan]

『デジタルアーカイブ学会誌』, 2022

Building Web Corpus of Old Nubian with Interlinear Glossing as Digital Cultural Heritage for Modern-Day Nubians (With Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei)

Proceedings of JADH conference, vol. 2021, The 11th Conference of Japanese Association for Digital Humanities , 2021

コプト語の体言化 (JPN: Nominalization in Coptic)

The ang-morphs in Coptic and their grammaticalization in Later Egyptian

Proceedings of the XI International Congress of Egyptologists, 2017

This study explores the possibility that the so-called ang-morphs, i.e., the phonologically reduc... more This study explores the possibility that the so-called ang-morphs, i.e., the phonologically reduced forms of independent personal pronouns in Coptic, are copulas. The literature states that Coptic has copulas that are derived from demonstrative pronouns, but there is no argument that the ang-morphs are copulas. However, these reduced forms are only used in nominal sentences, and they show a strong paradigmatic parallel-ism with the pe copulas. In order to indicate this, first, I typologized the grammaticalization patterns of copulas of diverse languages across the world, with reference to the literature on linguistic typology. I determined that there are three types of grammaticalization of copulas: (1) from an existential verb, (2) from a demonstrative pronoun, and (3) from a personal pronoun. Various languages have Type 3 copulas. Specifically, Classical Syriac has the phonologically reduced forms of the independent personal pronouns as copulas. Their phonological reduction and semantic breaching are similar to the ang-morphs in Sahidic. From this typological point of view, the ang-morphs have the potential to be seen as copulas. Next, I conducted a corpus research on the digitized version of the Sahidic New Testament. The results show that anok ang-NP sentences occur with indefinite NPs, and that the anok pe NP sentences tend to occur with definite NPs. Thus, we can see the paradigmatic relationship of the ang-morphs and the pe copulas in these copulative sentences. Finally, I explored the degree of grammaticalization of the ang-morphs. The dialectal and historical research suggests that Sahidic and Mesokemic have the most reduced forms of the ang-morphs, and the equivalents to the Coptic anok ang-NP sentences in Demotic and Late Egyptian are rare. These factors suggest a high possibility that the grammaticalization of the ang-morphs as copulas from independent personal pronouns in Later Egyptian were most developed in Sahidic and Mesokemic.

A Semantic Map of the Coptic Complementizer če- based on Corpus Analysis: Grammaticalization and Areal Typology in Africa

June 2018 Conference: Semantic maps: Where do we stand and where are we going?At: Liège, Belgium

Nominalization in Coptic

Text corpus and grammatical annotation of Sahidic Coptic: Fragments of a text by Besa preserved at Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III, Naples (in Japanese) [コプト語サイード方言の言語資料と文法注釈 ―ナポリ・国立ヴィットーリオ・エマヌエーレ3 世図書館蔵・ベーサによるテクストの断片―]

Polysemy and Grammaticalization of Complementizer in Egyptian-Coptic

Phonology of Supralinear Strokes on the Bound Morphs in Sahidic Coptic (in Japanese) [コプト・エジプト語サイード方言における拘束形態素上のスープラリニアー・ストローク（の音韻論） ](2016)

『言語記述論集（Journal of Kijutsuken, Descriptive Linguistics Study Group）』, 2016

The ang- Morphs in Coptic and their Grammaticalization in Later Egyptian

The ang- Morphs in Coptic and their Grammaticalization in Later Egyptian In:Proceedings of the X... more

[Abstract] Computational Analysis of Text Reuse in Shenoute and Besa

Computational Analysis of Text Reuse in Shenoute and Besa So Miyagawa and Marco Büchler Text reus... more Computational Analysis of Text Reuse in Shenoute and Besa So Miyagawa and Marco Büchler Text reuse in the Shenoute and Besa project was initiated at the University of Göttingen in 2015. It aims at detecting unknown text reuse from the Bible and other contemporary or older literature in the works of Shenoute and Besa, prominent Coptic writers in the fifth century. This project analyzes their text reuse with the help of TRACER, the text reuse detection software developed by Marco Büchler and his team. We divided this project into two steps. The first step was making an annotated corpus of Shenoute and Besa in the pipeline of Coptic SCRIPTORIUM, which was developed by Amir Zeldes and Caroline Schroeder. This is a linguistically-rich annotated corpus of Sahidic Coptic texts. With the collaboration of this corpus, we normalized, tokenized, and lemmatized our texts and tagged part of speech information in it in XML format. The second step was applying TRACER to the text parsed and annotated in the first step. We used Coptic biblical data offered by the Göttingen-based project The Digital Edition and Translation of the Coptic-Sahidic Old Testament to detect text reuse from the Bible. We worked on Besa's letters and sermons and also some parts of Shenoute's Canon 6. Besa's texts are based on the published texts that were compiled and edited by K. H. Kuhn. We checked his edition by comparing it against the real manuscripts. After the explanation of our pipeline, we will show you the hidden cases of their text reuse that were previously unknown and which could be discovered only by using our approach. Then we will show the characteristics of Shenoute and Besa's text reuse based on a quantitative analysis of the typology of text reuse (e.g., verbatim quotation, allusion, paraphrase, etc.). Finally, we will provide a comparison of text reuse characteristics between Shenoute and Besa.

Miyagawa, So (2017) Word Segmentation and Polysynthesis in Coptic. The International Summer School of Typology and Lexicon (TyLex) (Poster).(Rev.)

Miyagawa, So. (2015). Synthesis, Boundness and Clitics in Sahidic Coptic. Digital Coptic 2 (Handout).

Demonstratives and Spatial Calculation in Middle Egyptian

18-02-2016 at the 5th CROSSROAD(S) Conference in Berlin

English Translation of Bema Psalm 222 (A Coptic Manichaean Psalm) [revised, 2013]

Besa, On Lack of Food, eds. So Miyagawa and Caroline T. Schroeder, trans. So Miyagawa. urn:cts:copticLit:besa.food.monbbb. version 1, 2016-03-28. http://data.copticscriptorium.org/urn:cts:copticLit:besa.food.monbbb.

京都府南部方言と滋賀県湖南方言における重複形容詞 [Adjectival Reduplication in Southern Kyoto and Shiga Konan Japanese]

"Independent Personal Pronoun + Copula + Noun" Constructions in Later Egyptian

28 Sep. 2015, at ICE XI, in Florence

1st "Egyptology meets IT" Workshop on 18.11.2016

by So Miyagawa and Camilla Di Biase-Dyson

Shenoute, Besa and the Bible: Digital Text Reuse Analysis of Selected Monastic Writings from Egypt

SUB Göttingen, 2022

沖縄語のデジタル語彙資源の構築 [Making Digital Lexicon of Okinawan]

『デジタルアーカイブ学会誌』, 2022

Building Web Corpus of Old Nubian with Interlinear Glossing as Digital Cultural Heritage for Modern-Day Nubians (With Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei)

Proceedings of JADH conference, vol. 2021, The 11th Conference of Japanese Association for Digital Humanities , 2021

コプト語の体言化 (JPN: Nominalization in Coptic)

The ang-morphs in Coptic and their grammaticalization in Later Egyptian

Proceedings of the XI International Congress of Egyptologists, 2017

This study explores the possibility that the so-called ang-morphs, i.e., the phonologically reduc... more This study explores the possibility that the so-called ang-morphs, i.e., the phonologically reduced forms of independent personal pronouns in Coptic, are copulas. The literature states that Coptic has copulas that are derived from demonstrative pronouns, but there is no argument that the ang-morphs are copulas. However, these reduced forms are only used in nominal sentences, and they show a strong paradigmatic parallel-ism with the pe copulas. In order to indicate this, first, I typologized the grammaticalization patterns of copulas of diverse languages across the world, with reference to the literature on linguistic typology. I determined that there are three types of grammaticalization of copulas: (1) from an existential verb, (2) from a demonstrative pronoun, and (3) from a personal pronoun. Various languages have Type 3 copulas. Specifically, Classical Syriac has the phonologically reduced forms of the independent personal pronouns as copulas. Their phonological reduction and semantic breaching are similar to the ang-morphs in Sahidic. From this typological point of view, the ang-morphs have the potential to be seen as copulas. Next, I conducted a corpus research on the digitized version of the Sahidic New Testament. The results show that anok ang-NP sentences occur with indefinite NPs, and that the anok pe NP sentences tend to occur with definite NPs. Thus, we can see the paradigmatic relationship of the ang-morphs and the pe copulas in these copulative sentences. Finally, I explored the degree of grammaticalization of the ang-morphs. The dialectal and historical research suggests that Sahidic and Mesokemic have the most reduced forms of the ang-morphs, and the equivalents to the Coptic anok ang-NP sentences in Demotic and Late Egyptian are rare. These factors suggest a high possibility that the grammaticalization of the ang-morphs as copulas from independent personal pronouns in Later Egyptian were most developed in Sahidic and Mesokemic.

A Semantic Map of the Coptic Complementizer če- based on Corpus Analysis: Grammaticalization and Areal Typology in Africa

June 2018 Conference: Semantic maps: Where do we stand and where are we going?At: Liège, Belgium

Nominalization in Coptic

Text corpus and grammatical annotation of Sahidic Coptic: Fragments of a text by Besa preserved at Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III, Naples (in Japanese) [コプト語サイード方言の言語資料と文法注釈 ―ナポリ・国立ヴィットーリオ・エマヌエーレ3 世図書館蔵・ベーサによるテクストの断片―]

Polysemy and Grammaticalization of Complementizer in Egyptian-Coptic

Phonology of Supralinear Strokes on the Bound Morphs in Sahidic Coptic (in Japanese) [コプト・エジプト語サイード方言における拘束形態素上のスープラリニアー・ストローク（の音韻論） ](2016)

『言語記述論集（Journal of Kijutsuken, Descriptive Linguistics Study Group）』, 2016

The ang- Morphs in Coptic and their Grammaticalization in Later Egyptian

The ang- Morphs in Coptic and their Grammaticalization in Later Egyptian In:Proceedings of the X... more

[Abstract] Computational Analysis of Text Reuse in Shenoute and Besa

Computational Analysis of Text Reuse in Shenoute and Besa So Miyagawa and Marco Büchler Text reus... more Computational Analysis of Text Reuse in Shenoute and Besa So Miyagawa and Marco Büchler Text reuse in the Shenoute and Besa project was initiated at the University of Göttingen in 2015. It aims at detecting unknown text reuse from the Bible and other contemporary or older literature in the works of Shenoute and Besa, prominent Coptic writers in the fifth century. This project analyzes their text reuse with the help of TRACER, the text reuse detection software developed by Marco Büchler and his team. We divided this project into two steps. The first step was making an annotated corpus of Shenoute and Besa in the pipeline of Coptic SCRIPTORIUM, which was developed by Amir Zeldes and Caroline Schroeder. This is a linguistically-rich annotated corpus of Sahidic Coptic texts. With the collaboration of this corpus, we normalized, tokenized, and lemmatized our texts and tagged part of speech information in it in XML format. The second step was applying TRACER to the text parsed and annotated in the first step. We used Coptic biblical data offered by the Göttingen-based project The Digital Edition and Translation of the Coptic-Sahidic Old Testament to detect text reuse from the Bible. We worked on Besa's letters and sermons and also some parts of Shenoute's Canon 6. Besa's texts are based on the published texts that were compiled and edited by K. H. Kuhn. We checked his edition by comparing it against the real manuscripts. After the explanation of our pipeline, we will show you the hidden cases of their text reuse that were previously unknown and which could be discovered only by using our approach. Then we will show the characteristics of Shenoute and Besa's text reuse based on a quantitative analysis of the typology of text reuse (e.g., verbatim quotation, allusion, paraphrase, etc.). Finally, we will provide a comparison of text reuse characteristics between Shenoute and Besa.

Miyagawa, So (2017) Word Segmentation and Polysynthesis in Coptic. The International Summer School of Typology and Lexicon (TyLex) (Poster).(Rev.)

Miyagawa, So. (2015). Synthesis, Boundness and Clitics in Sahidic Coptic. Digital Coptic 2 (Handout).

Demonstratives and Spatial Calculation in Middle Egyptian

18-02-2016 at the 5th CROSSROAD(S) Conference in Berlin

English Translation of Bema Psalm 222 (A Coptic Manichaean Psalm) [revised, 2013]

Besa, On Lack of Food, eds. So Miyagawa and Caroline T. Schroeder, trans. So Miyagawa. urn:cts:copticLit:besa.food.monbbb. version 1, 2016-03-28. http://data.copticscriptorium.org/urn:cts:copticLit:besa.food.monbbb.

京都府南部方言と滋賀県湖南方言における重複形容詞 [Adjectival Reduplication in Southern Kyoto and Shiga Konan Japanese]

"Independent Personal Pronoun + Copula + Noun" Constructions in Later Egyptian

28 Sep. 2015, at ICE XI, in Florence

付録：コプト語サイード方言概要 (宮川創 2015 年 6 月 10 日) (Appendix: Descriptive Overview of Sahidic Coptic)

2017 Yoko Nishimura and So Miyagawa, "An Early History of Egyptology in Japan with a Focus on Philological Studies"

by Yoko Nishimura and So Miyagawa

Christian Langer ed., Global Egyptology: Negotiations in the Production of Knowledges on Ancient Egypt in Global Contexts (GHP Egyptology 26)., 2017

We have explored three objects, focusing on the first half of the Twentieth Century: the Japanese... more We have explored three objects, focusing on the first half of the Twentieth Century: the Japanese encounter with ancient Egypt, the growth of academic research on ancient Egypt in Japan, and the establishment of the academic Study of ancient Egypt that led to the contemporary academic scene in Japan.

Digital History of Egypt in the Roman and Byzantine Periods: A Case Study of Shenoute the Archimandrite

Historical Studies of the Western World, 2022

Shenoute, Besa, and the Bible: Digital Text Reuse Analysis of Selected Monastic Writings from Egypt

Göttingen State and University Library (SUB Göttingen), 2022

This study sees itself as part of the larger field of intertextuality studies and examines, using... more This study sees itself as part of the larger field of intertextuality studies and examines, using the latest digital text reuse technology, the reuse of biblical texts in the writings of two Late Antique Christian authors from Egypt, the abbots Shenoute and Besa. It explores, on the basis of selected writings by these authors, the advantages and limitations of using digital methods to study the form and function of biblical intertexts in monastic literature written in Coptic. In particular, it seeks answers to a number of specific research questions, e.g., the extent to which quotations are faithful to the original biblical sources, the influence of quotation-introducing formulae or the question how digital technologies can be used to facilitate intertextuality studies. To pursue these topics, after an introduction to the life and works of both authors (Chapter 1), it describes the state of research for intertextuality studies with a focus on biblical and Early Christian and Coptic studies, and Shenoute in particular (Chapter 2). Text reuse detection technology, which was developed in the field of computer science, is introduced, and its practical applications are described. Specific focus is placed on the history of text reuse detection and the subtle differences between intertextuality and text reuses. In addition, the current progress in studies on intertextuality in Shenoute’s works is explored. Digital text reuse technology is described in detail (Chapter 3), in particular the technology that underpins the processing mechanisms employed by the latest text reuse detection software, TRACER, and pre-processing features such as optical character recognition, Unicode conversion, tokenization, lemmatization, and part-of-speech tagging. The case study for examining the application of digital text reuse technology has to focus on a limited selection of biblical texts, and specifically, on the best attested and most well-known book of the Old Testament, the Book of Psalms. Chapter 4 presents the philological and codicological information on the corpora used, the Sahidic translation of the Psalms, and the selected works by Shenoute and Besa, while Chapter 5 is dedicated to the case study and its results. It analyzes text reuses newly identified by TRACER, discusses instances of idiomatic text reuse and the question of quotation-introducing signals. In summary, this study confirms observations by previous research that the monastic authors built on the audience’s collective memory of the Bible by blending biblical phrases and concepts with their own monastic ideals. For the purpose of recontextualizing the source texts and fitting them to the current situation, unmarked changes may be applied, mostly of a grammatical nature. An interesting difference between the two monastic authors may be noted in their use of quotation-introducing signals, which merits further exploration, as does the question of the relation between the introduction of a quotation and its faithfulness. Finally, it needs to be stressed that ongoing and future digitization of the corpus of monastic authors and Coptic literature in general will very much widen the scope of digital text reuse methods and lead to new research questions and discoveries.

KELLIA White Paper on Transcription and Encoding Standards for Digital Coptic

by Caroline T Schroeder and So Miyagawa

KELLIA Project, 2019

Transcription and Encoding guidelines for Digital Coptic Studies, for researchers transcribing an... more

KELLIA White Paper on Metadata Standards for Digital Coptic Metadata Standards for Digital Coptic

by Caroline T Schroeder and So Miyagawa

KELLIA, 2019

Recommendations and guidelines for metadata considerations for projects in Digital Coptic Studies... more Recommendations and guidelines for metadata considerations for projects in Digital Coptic Studies. These guidelines were developed as part of the American-German bilateral KELLIA project (https://kellia.uni-goettingen.de) funded by a joint grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (HG-229371) and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (BE 4172/1-1) These guidelines are also available on the project site (https://kellia.uni-goettingen.de/products.html) and are included as an appendix to the main KELLIA Project White Paper and Report (https://kellia.uni-goettingen.de/downloads/KELLIA-white-paper.pdf)

Final Report and White Paper for Koptische/Coptic Electronic Language and Literature International Alliance (KELLIA)

by Caroline T Schroeder, So Miyagawa, and Heike Behlmer

KELLIA project, 2019

Final full report and White Paper for the American-German bilateral KELLIA project (https://kelli... more Final full report and White Paper for the American-German bilateral KELLIA project (https://kellia.uni-goettingen.de) funded by a joint grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (HG-229371) and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (BE 4172/1-1) This document is also on the project site (https://kellia.uni-goettingen.de/products.html).

Optical character recognition of typeset Coptic text with neural networks

by So Miyagawa and Heike Behlmer

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, Volume 34, Issue Supplement_1, December 2019, Pages i135–i141, https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqz023, 2019

Digital Humanities (DH) within Coptic Studies, an emerging field of development , will be much ai... more Digital Humanities (DH) within Coptic Studies, an emerging field of development , will be much aided by the digitization of large quantities of typeset Coptic texts. Until recently, the only Optical Character Recognition (OCR) analysis of printed Coptic texts had been executed by Moheb S. Mekhaiel, who used the Tesseract program to create a text model for liturgical books in the Bohairic dialect of Coptic. However, this model is not suitable for the many scholarly editions of texts in the Sahidic dialect of Coptic which use noticeably different fonts. In the current study, DH and Coptological projects based in Göttingen, Germany, collaborated to develop a new Coptic OCR pipeline suitable for use with all Coptic dialects. The objective of the study was to generate a model which can facilitate digital Coptic Studies and produce Coptic corpora from existing

Building Linguistically and Intertextually Tagged Coptic Corpora with Open Source Tools

by So Miyagawa and Heike Behlmer

Proceedings of the 8th Conference of Japanese Association for Digital Humanities, 2018

Miyagawa, S., Zeldes, A., Büchler, M., Behlmer, H., & Troy Griffitts. (2018). Building linguistic... more Miyagawa, S., Zeldes, A., Büchler, M., Behlmer, H., & Troy Griffitts. (2018). Building linguistically and intertextually tagged Coptic corpora with open source tools. In: C. Suzuki (ed.), Proceedings of the 8th Conference of Japanese Association for Digital Humanities. Tokyo: Center for Open Data in the Humanities. 139-141.

Digital Humanities and Coptic Studies, 2nd ed. (Augmented ed., Slides)

Kirill Bulert, So Miyagawa and Marco Büchler. 2017. Optical Character Recognition with a Neural Network Model for Printed Coptic Texts. In Rhian Lewis et al. (eds.) Digital Humanities 2017 Conference Abstracts. pp. 657-659.

by So Miyagawa and Kirill Bulert

Digital Humanities 2017 Conference Abstracts, 2017

An intuitive unicode input method for ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing : applying the input technology of the Japanese writing system, Altertumswissenschaften in a Digital Age : Egyptology, Papyrology and beyond ; proceedings of a conference and workshop in Leipzig, November 4-6, 2015

In this study, I extended input methods for the Japanese language to Egyptian hieroglyphics. Ther... more In this study, I extended input methods for the Japanese language to Egyptian hieroglyphics. There are several systems that capable of inputting Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. However, they do not allow us to directly input hieroglyphs, for instance, into MS Word. The new Egyptian hieroglyphic input system being reported here, developed using technology used for inputting Japanese writing, is quite unique and allows the direct input of hieroglyphs, for example, into MS Word. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and the Japanese writing system (with its mixture of hiragana, katakana and kanji) share basic graphemic characteristics. For instance, Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic logograms are functionally similar to Japanese kanji logograms (Chinese characters), whereas Egyptian hieroglyphic phonograms are functionally similar to Japanese hiragana and katakana syllabic phonograms. The input technology for Japanese makes it possible to input a mixture of logograms and phonograms, and phonetic complements. This technology is a well-organized and handy tool to input Japanese writing into computers, having been used by over 100 million people. I applied this technology to Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic inputting and created a new intuitive hieroglyphic inputting system using Google Japanese Input. Using this method, anyone can directly write Egyptian hieroglyphic writing into software like MS Word. If the transcription of an ancient Egyptian word is entered, the correct hieroglyphs are generated by this system. If there are multiple options for any phonemic combinations that use other combinations of phonetic complements or determinatives, a dropdown window with a list of several combinations of glyphs appears and the user can choose the desired combination.

Miyagawa, S., Büchler, M. ‘Computational Analysis of Text Reuse in Shenoute and Besa‘, 11th International Congress of Coptic Studies. July, 28.

Miyagawa, S., Büchler, M. ‘Computational Analysis of Text Reuse in Shenoute and Besa‘, 11th Inter... more

Hieroglyph Font with Square Writing for the Web

by So Miyagawa and Marwan Kilani

Utilization of Common OCR Tools for Typeset Coptic Texts

This paper analyzes the possibility of extracting Unicode text from printed Coptic texts. We used... more This paper analyzes the possibility of extracting Unicode text from printed Coptic texts. We used several methods to perform this action. We finally obtained significant results using Ocropy[3]. In this paper, we will explain the pre-processing, processing and post-processing using OCR on Coptic printed texts, and our results.

Using HieroTeX on Mac OS X Yosemite [fixed the url problem]

[Poster] Utilization of Common OCR Tools for Typeset Coptic Texts Coptic diacritics, punctuation, and editorial signs Comparison between Tesseract and Ocropy

Development in encoding and inputting Ancient Egyptian and Coptic, and their benefits to projects of Egyptological Digital Humanities in the future, in comparison with the case of East Asian Writing Systems

コプトに関する報道 [Coptic News in Japanese]

Coptic Studies and Digital Humanities, 2nd Ed. (Augmented Edition; Slides)

[Session] An Intuitive Unicode Input Method for Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Writing: Applying the Input Technology of the Japanese Writing System

Development in encoding and inputting Ancient Egyptian and Coptic, and their benefits to projects of Egyptological Digital Humanities in the future, in comparison with the case of the East Asian Writing System

Egyptian Hieroglyphic Unicode Input with Square Writing: a success of the SINUHE project

[incomplete draft] Digitization of Coptic Manuscripts and Digital Humanities Tools and Methods for Coptology

Unpublished abstract on Coptic Linguistics (Polysynthesis/Analiticity) for comments and corrections

Ainu–Japanese Bi-directional Neural Machine Translation: A Step Towards Linguistic Preservation of Ainu, An Under-Resourced Indigenous Language in Japan

Journal of data mining and digital humanities, Apr 29, 2024

Curation in Digital Archive of Language Resources: A Case Study of NINJAL Digital Archive “NINDA”

Jōhō Chishiki Gakkaishi/Jouhou Chishiki Gakkaishi, May 20, 2023

辻明日香著『コプト聖人伝にみる十四世紀エジプト社会』

Bulletin of the Society for Near Eastern Studies in Japan, Mar 31, 2019

An intuitive unicode input method for ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing

In this study, I extended input methods for the Japanese language to Egyptian hieroglyphics. Ther... more In this study, I extended input methods for the Japanese language to Egyptian hieroglyphics. There are several systems that capable of inputting Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. However, they do not allow us to directly input hieroglyphs, for instance, into MS Word. The new Egyptian hieroglyphic input system being reported here, developed using technology used for inputting Japanese writing, is quite unique and allows the direct input of hieroglyphs, for example, into MS Word. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and the Japanese writing system (with its mixture of hiragana, katakana and kanji) share basic graphemic characteristics. For instance, Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic logograms are functionally similar to Japanese kanji logograms (Chinese characters), whereas Egyptian hieroglyphic phonograms are functionally similar to Japanese hiragana and katakana syllabic phonograms. The input technology for Japanese makes it possible to input a mixture of logograms and phonograms, and phonetic complements. This technology is a well-organized and handy tool to input Japanese writing into computers, having been used by over 100 million people. I applied this technology to Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic inputting and created a new intuitive hieroglyphic inputting system using Google Japanese Input. Using this method, anyone can directly write Egyptian hieroglyphic writing into software like MS Word. If the transcription of an ancient Egyptian word is entered, the correct hieroglyphs are generated by this system. If there are multiple options for any phonemic combinations that use other combinations of phonetic complements or determinatives, a dropdown window with a list of several combinations of glyphs appears and the user can choose the desired combination

The ang-morphs in Coptic and their grammaticalization in Later Egyptian¹

This study explores the possibility that the so-called ang-morphs, i.e., the phonologically reduc... more This study explores the possibility that the so-called ang-morphs, i.e., the phonologically reduced forms of independent personal pronouns in Coptic, are copulas. The literature states that Coptic has copulas that are derived from demonstrative pronouns, but there is no argument that the ang-morphs are copulas. However, these reduced forms are only used in nominal sentences, and they show a strong paradigmatic parallel-ism with the pe copulas. In order to indicate this, first, I typologized the grammaticalization patterns of copulas of diverse languages across the world, with reference to the literature on linguistic typology. I determined that there are three types of grammaticalization of copulas: (1) from an existential verb, (2) from a demonstrative pronoun, and (3) from a personal pronoun. Various languages have Type 3 copulas. Specifically, Classical Syriac has the phonologically reduced forms of the independent personal pronouns as copulas. Their phonological reduction and semantic breaching are similar to the ang-morphs in Sahidic. From this typological point of view, the ang-morphs have the potential to be seen as copulas. Next, I conducted a corpus research on the digitized version of the Sahidic New Testament. The results show that anok ang-NP sentences occur with indefinite NPs, and that the anok pe NP sentences tend to occur with definite NPs. Thus, we can see the paradigmatic relationship of the ang-morphs and the pe copulas in these copulative sentences. Finally, I explored the degree of grammaticalization of the ang-morphs. The dialectal and historical research suggests that Sahidic and Mesokemic have the most reduced forms of the ang-morphs, and the equivalents to the Coptic anok ang-NP sentences in Demotic and Late Egyptian are rare. These factors suggest a high possibility that the grammaticalization of the ang-morphs as copulas from independent personal pronouns in Later Egyptian were most developed in Sahidic and Mesokemic.

An intuitive unicode input method for ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing: applying the input technology of the Japanese writing system

In this study, I extended input methods for the Japanese language to Egyptian hieroglyphics. Ther... more In this study, I extended input methods for the Japanese language to Egyptian hieroglyphics. There are several systems that capable of inputting Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. However, they do not allow us to directly input hieroglyphs, for instance, into MS Word. The new Egyptian hieroglyphic input system being reported here, developed using technology used for inputting Japanese writing, is quite unique and allows the direct input of hieroglyphs, for example, into MS Word. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and the Japanese writing system (with its mixture of hiragana, katakana and kanji) share basic graphemic characteristics. For instance, Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic logograms are functionally similar to Japanese kanji logograms (Chinese characters), whereas Egyptian hieroglyphic phonograms are functionally similar to Japanese hiragana and katakana syllabic phonograms. The input technology for Japanese makes it possible to input a mixture of logograms and phonograms, and phonetic com...

辻明日香著『コプト聖人伝にみる十四世紀エジプト社会』

Bulletin of the Society for Near Eastern Studies in Japan, 2019

OUP accepted manuscript

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 2019

Digital Humanities (DH) within Coptic Studies, an emerging field of development, will be much aid... more Digital Humanities (DH) within Coptic Studies, an emerging field of development, will be much aided by the digitization of large quantities of typeset Coptic texts. Until recently, the only Optical Character Recognition (OCR) analysis of printed Coptic texts had been executed by Moheb S. Mekhaiel, who used the Tesseract program to create a text model for liturgical books in the Bohairic dialect of Coptic. However, this model is not suitable for the many scholarly editions of texts in the Sahidic dialect of Coptic which use noticeably different fonts. In the current study, DH and Coptological projects based in Göttingen, Germany, collaborated to develop a new Coptic OCR pipeline suitable for use with all Coptic dialects. The objective of the study was to generate a model which can facilitate digital Coptic Studies and produce Coptic corpora from existing printed texts. First, we compared the two available OCR programs that can recognize Coptic: Tesseract and Ocropy. The results indic...

The Making of Coptic Wordnet

Global WordNet Conference, 2019

The ang-morphs in Coptic and their grammaticalization in Later Egyptian¹

Proceedings of the XI International Congress of Egyptologists, Florence, Italy 23-30 August 2015, 2017

This study explores the possibility that the so-called ang-morphs, i.e., the phonologically reduc... more This study explores the possibility that the so-called ang-morphs, i.e., the phonologically reduced forms of independent personal pronouns in Coptic, are copulas. The literature states that Coptic has copulas that are derived from demonstrative pronouns, but there is no argument that the ang-morphs are copulas. However, these reduced forms are only used in nominal sentences, and they show a strong paradigmatic parallel-ism with the pe copulas. In order to indicate this, first, I typologized the grammaticalization patterns of copulas of diverse languages across the world, with reference to the literature on linguistic typology. I determined that there are three types of grammaticalization of copulas: (1) from an existential verb, (2) from a demonstrative pronoun, and (3) from a personal pronoun. Various languages have Type 3 copulas. Specifically, Classical Syriac has the phonologically reduced forms of the independent personal pronouns as copulas. Their phonological reduction and semantic breaching are similar to the ang-morphs in Sahidic. From this typological point of view, the ang-morphs have the potential to be seen as copulas. Next, I conducted a corpus research on the digitized version of the Sahidic New Testament. The results show that anok ang-NP sentences occur with indefinite NPs, and that the anok pe NP sentences tend to occur with definite NPs. Thus, we can see the paradigmatic relationship of the ang-morphs and the pe copulas in these copulative sentences. Finally, I explored the degree of grammaticalization of the ang-morphs. The dialectal and historical research suggests that Sahidic and Mesokemic have the most reduced forms of the ang-morphs, and the equivalents to the Coptic anok ang-NP sentences in Demotic and Late Egyptian are rare. These factors suggest a high possibility that the grammaticalization of the ang-morphs as copulas from independent personal pronouns in Later Egyptian were most developed in Sahidic and Mesokemic.

The Making of Coptic Wordnet

With the increasing availability of wordnets for ancient languages, such as Ancient Greek and Lat... more With the increasing availability of wordnets for ancient languages, such as Ancient Greek and Latin, gaps remain in the coverage of less studied languages of antiquity. This paper reports on the construction and evaluation of a new wordnet for Coptic, the language of Late Roman, Byzantine and Early Islamic Egypt in the first millenium CE. We present our approach to constructing the wordnet which uses multilingual Coptic dictionaries and wordnets for five different languages. We further discuss the results of this effort and outline our on-going/future work.

(FULL PDF) Nishimura, Yoko and So Miyagawa. 2017. An Early History of Egyptology in Japan with a Focus on Philological Studies. In Global Egyptology. Negotiations in the Production of Knowledges on Ancient Egypt in Global Contexts, ed. Christian Langer. London: Golden House Publications.

by Yoko Nishimura and So Miyagawa

Egyptology meets IT 1

by Camilla Di Biase-Dyson and So Miyagawa

HTRプログラムTranskribusによる日本語キリシタン版『コンテムツス・ムンヂ』のデジタルアーカイブ化 (Application of Transkribus for a Digitization of the Japanese Christian Contemptus Mundi) (in Japanese)

by Sophie Takahashi and So Miyagawa

デジタルアーカイブ学会誌、第7回研究大会予稿、2022 年 6 巻 s3 号 p. s123-s126 (Dejitaru Akaibu Gakkaishi, 2022 Volume 6, Is... more デジタルアーカイブ学会誌、第7回研究大会予稿、2022 年 6 巻 s3 号 p. s123-s126 (Dejitaru Akaibu Gakkaishi, 2022 Volume 6, Issue s3, Pages s123-s126)

2017年にドイツのヘルツォーク・アウグスト図書館（HAB）で発見された新出キリシタン資料ローマ字本日本語訳『コンテムツス・ムンヂ』の翻刻プロジェクトで用いられた技術と公開方法について論じる。本論文著者両名による日独共同研究プロジェクトにおいて、ルール大学ボーフムのオースタカンプ・スヱン教授の指導のもと、本文献のデジタル化を目標としたデジタル技術活用に関する議論と実践がなされた。そこでは、機械学習による自動翻刻ソフトウェアTranskribusを用いて、そのHTR（Handwritten Text Recognition）モデルに学習させ、自動および手動修正で文献のレイアウト・補助記号などを忠実に再現したデジタル翻刻が行われた。本プロジェクトは、このデジタル翻刻に基づいて、本キリシタン版をデジタルアーカイブ化し、可能な研究対象として公開し、国際的な研究に活用できるようにするモデルを提示する。

In this presentation we discuss the digital methods applied in the Japanese-German collaboration project when transcribing the Japanese Contemptus Mundi, preserved at Herzog August Library (HAB), Germany, discovered in 2017. The Software Transkribus and its Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR)-engines are used to train tailored HTR-Models to assist in the diplomatic transcription of this bibliographical rarity. Machine Learning is based on Long- and Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). The output is aimed to be published on an open access digital archive repository to create an openly available and researchable source.

Interlinear Glossing on Coptic Text: Past, Present, and Future

by Mona sawy and So Miyagawa

This paper explores the interlinear glossing in Coptic. Coptic is the last stage of the Egyptian ... more This paper explores the interlinear glossing in Coptic. Coptic is the last stage of the Egyptian language, and many important religious texts were written in this language, especially during the Late Antiquity period. Coptic Christians continue to use Coptic in their liturgies to this day. We commence the paper with an exploration of the interlinear glossing on Coptic texts that can be observed in medieval manuscripts. The most representative attestation is MS Copt. 14 (Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana), which contains the translation of Pauline Epistles, Catholic Epistles, and Acts in the Bohairic dialect of the Coptic language. However, Arabic interlinear glosses were written above the Coptic words or phrases at a later date. In addition, MS Or. Quart. 159 (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin) contains interlinear glosses of Arabic on Bohairic Coptic translations of the Psalms. The interlinear glosses of both manuscripts contain Arabic translations above every Coptic word or phrase. Next, we discuss more contemporary examples of interlinear glossing of Coptic text. More recent publications on Coptic have frequently contained glossings that consider Leipzig Glossing Rules. However, the glossing methods employed by linguists in these papers vary greatly. The latter part of this paper will analyze the modern linguistic glossing on Coptic observed in selected papers from volumes of the journal Lingua Aegyptia and the volume of Grossman, Eitan, Martin Haspelmath, and Tonio Sebastian Richter (eds.) (2015) Egyptian-Coptic Linguistics in Typological Perspective, Empirical Approaches to Language Typology 55, Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. The multilayered Coptic corpus of the Coptic SCRIPTORIUM project contains glossings of parts of speech, lemmata, and syntactic information displayed on an online multilayered corpus platform called ANNIS; however, it does not contain the glossings for the meaning of morphemes. One approach by which this is possible is through the addition of a further layer of standardized glossing to the corpus. To achieve this, it will be essential to standardize the Coptic glossing. Thus, this paper explores interlinear glossings of Coptic from the medieval to modern times with the objective of developing a standard that can be applied to govern future glossing for Coptic.