The "handedness" of language: Directional symmetry breaking of sign usage in words
This research identifies a universal property of language and writing across diverse systems, potentially reflecting innate human cognitive features, though it is incremental in building on existing phonotactic studies.
The study analyzed large written corpora across multiple languages and scripts, revealing that word beginnings have less restrictive sign usage than word ends, a property not attributable to common affixes. This asymmetry was used to infer writing direction in undeciphered inscriptions, aligning with archaeological evidence.
Language, which allows complex ideas to be communicated through symbolic sequences, is a characteristic feature of our species and manifested in a multitude of forms. Using large written corpora for many different languages and scripts, we show that the occurrence probability distributions of signs at the left and right ends of words have a distinct heterogeneous nature. Characterizing this asymmetry using quantitative inequality measures, viz. information entropy and the Gini index, we show that the beginning of a word is less restrictive in sign usage than the end. This property is not simply attributable to the use of common affixes as it is seen even when only word roots are considered. We use the existence of this asymmetry to infer the direction of writing in undeciphered inscriptions that agrees with the archaeological evidence. Unlike traditional investigations of phonotactic constraints which focus on language-specific patterns, our study reveals a property valid across languages and writing systems. As both language and writing are unique aspects of our species, this universal signature may reflect an innate feature of the human cognitive phenomenon.