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Forensic linguists use grammar, syntax and vocabulary to help crack cold cases

thedial.world

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Re: Forensic linguists use grammar, syntax and vocabulary to help crack cold cases

#11

Post by yunruse »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #7
lqet wrote: post #2

> Spellings such as “wilfully” for “willfully” and “clew” for “clue” pointed to someone from the Chicago area, for example. Eventually, the linguistic evidence was strong enough to issue a search warrant for the home of a reclusive mathematician named Theodore Kaczynski, raised in Chicago but living in rural Montana One thing Kaczynski's brother noticed as particularly idiosyncratic was the consistent use of the phra…

> Indeed, this used to be the most common form of the expression until the 1930s–1940s, when it was overtaken by the have-eat variant. — https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=You_can%27t_have_...

I wonder if this has some sort of preference for ablaut reduplication [0]? I don't have the vowel phonics off by hand, but "have your cake and eat it" seems to flow a little more smoothly than "eat your cake and have it".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduplication#English

Re: Forensic linguists use grammar, syntax and vocabulary to help crack cold cases

#13

Post by hnbad »

Popular crime shows like CSI (and arguably detective novels even before that) have created a false impression that forensics are an exact science that can perfectly narrow down the list of suspects to the exact person who did it.

But of course in reality it is much more complex. All forms of forensic evidence are vulnerable to noise: sure, that one interesting artifact may be evidence but it also may not be, and the inverse may be true for that perfectly ordinary thing everyone missed. A linguistic quirk can be a piece of evidence but it can also be accidental (e.g. nowadays it might also result from bad predictive typing or autocomplete, or even more recently, as others have pointed out, LLMs).

So all of these are in effect just probabilistic filters. And filters are only useful when your sample size includes your target (i.e. if the actual perpetrator is a suspect and you have adequate data about them). And even then they may not only produce false positives but also false negatives and these may interact the more filters you attempt to combine.

Forensic linguistics can be useful when you have a small set of suspects that you absolutely know includes the actual perpetrator. But otherwise they can send you on a wild goose chase or hurt the innocent.

Re: Forensic linguists use grammar, syntax and vocabulary to help crack cold cases

#14

Post by z3t4 »

Does anyone have any recommendation on software that can analyses text messages and then tell if two users are the same person?

The use case is for competitive gaming where a player can get a major advantage by using several accounts. So the software can be used for screening and detect accounts that are suspicious alike.

Re: Forensic linguists use grammar, syntax and vocabulary to help crack cold cases

#15

Post by giarc »

alanh wrote: post #8

Here's your clew (sic) that the article may not be so reliable: It credits the FBI's linguistic analysis for locating the Unabomber, when in reality, it was his own brother who said “hey, it sounds like Ted.”

I don't totally agree with you but I see where you are coming from. The article states "Eventually, the linguistic evidence was strong enough to issue a search warrant..." which could be referring to the brother pointing out the similar writing style or the FBI's assessment pointing to someone from Chicago. It's not clear.

Re: Forensic linguists use grammar, syntax and vocabulary to help crack cold cases

#17

Post by runamuck »

ChiMan wrote: post #9

I think we can expect sophisticated criminals to start using AI to rewrite their correspondence.

I think so. Along those lines, did the underworld learn the lesson from Bernardo Provenzano (who got caught due to reliance on a Cesar Cipher) and step up their encryption?

Re: Forensic linguists use grammar, syntax and vocabulary to help crack cold cases

#19

Post by ret54 »

tgv wrote: post #16

> According to forensic linguists, we all use language in a uniquely identifiable way that can be as incriminating as a fingerprint. That's a bold and unproven statement, made worse because we can't really see that fingerprint.

there was this that unmasked alt HN users identity 2 years back using stylometric analysis from a previous comment dump

AFAIU the more people know of it the better expectations are set about real account privacy

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33755016

Re: Forensic linguists use grammar, syntax and vocabulary to help crack cold cases

#20

Post by xandrius »

lqet wrote: post #2

> Spellings such as “wilfully” for “willfully” and “clew” for “clue” pointed to someone from the Chicago area, for example. Eventually, the linguistic evidence was strong enough to issue a search warrant for the home of a reclusive mathematician named Theodore Kaczynski, raised in Chicago but living in rural Montana One thing Kaczynski's brother noticed as particularly idiosyncratic was the consistent use of the phra…

It does make more sense to me though: of course I can have my cake and then eat it. But I can't eat it and still have it afterwards.

So the order implies the temporality of the actions.

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