The Linguistic Velocity Index: Writing System Developmental Rates as a Statistical Instrument for Contact Event Detection in the Archaeological Record

Companion to OSF project 8z6tj and the ORCA/ARCH Research Program (Welch 2026). Introduces the Linguistic Velocity Index (LVI), a Bayesian likelihood ratio framework for measuring writing system developmental rates and detecting contact events from corpus-structural data without phonetic decipherment. Applied to ten writing systems across twelve corpus analyses including rongorongo, Cherokee syllabary, proto-cuneiform, Proto-Elamite, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Linear B, Mayan glyphs, and the Indus Valley script. Targeted for submission to PLOS ONE.

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Publication Details

Journal
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Published
2026-06-09
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20613808
Primary Topic
Language and cultural evolution
Type
preprint
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preprint

The Linguistic Velocity Index: Writing System Developmental Rates as a Statistical Instrument for Contact Event Detection in the Archaeological Record

Welch Roger
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Language and cultural evolution
preprint

The Linguistic Velocity Index: Writing System Developmental Rates as a Statistical Instrument for Contact Event Detection in the Archaeological Record

Welch Roger
preprint en

Abstract

Companion to OSF project 8z6tj and the ORCA/ARCH Research Program (Welch 2026). Introduces the Linguistic Velocity Index (LVI), a Bayesian likelihood ratio framework for measuring writing system developmental rates and detecting contact events from corpus-structural data without phonetic decipherment. Applied to ten writing systems across twelve corpus analyses including rongorongo, Cherokee syllabary, proto-cuneiform, Proto-Elamite, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Linear B, Mayan glyphs, and the Indus Valley script. Targeted for submission to PLOS ONE.

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Quality Education
Language and cultural evolution
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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The Linguistic Velocity Index: Writing System Developmental Rates as a Statistical Instrument for Contact Event Detection in the Archaeological Record — Welch Roger · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) (2026) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS