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Article: Illuminating manuscripts. (Dr. James Marchand and John Friedman use data-processing to recover lost languages and identify authors of anonymous documents)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- May 25, 1991
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1991 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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MONKS and scribes were the dataprocessors of the Middle Ages, gathering, copying and disseminating information. The fruits of their labour now attract scholarship as much as, over the centuries, they have attracted dust. But how to wring new information from a few old pieces of vellum and papyrus? One answer, according to two scholars at the University of illinois, is to use modern data-processing.
James Marchand studies Gothic, the oldest teutonic language with any written remains. it sheds light on the origins of modern English, German and the Scandinavian languages. Unfortunately, only one Gothic text, the Codex Argenteus, a piece of the New Testament written ...