An application of persistent homology and the graph theory to linguistics: The case of Tifinagh and Phoenician scripts

Abstract As the origin of Tifinagh script remains uncertain, this work aims at exploring its probable relatedness with Phoenician script. Using tools from within topological data analysis and graph theory, similarity between two scripts is studied. The clustering their letter shapes performed based on pairwise distances signatures. ideas presented in can be extended to study any writing systems as such serve first step for linguists determine possibly related before conducting further analysis.