Grammar and Meaning: Analysing the Topology of Diachronic Word Embeddings

Yuri Bizzoni, Stefania Degaetano-Ortlieb, Katrin Menzel, Pauline Krielke, Elke Teich


Abstract
The paper showcases the application of word embeddings to change in language use in the domain of science, focusing on the Late Modern English period (17-19th century). Historically, this is the period in which many registers of English developed, including the language of science. Our overarching interest is the linguistic development of scientific writing to a distinctive (group of) register(s). A register is marked not only by the choice of lexical words (discourse domain) but crucially by grammatical choices which indicate style. The focus of the paper is on the latter, tracing words with primarily grammatical functions (function words and some selected, poly-functional word forms) diachronically. To this end, we combine diachronic word embeddings with appropriate visualization and exploratory techniques such as clustering and relative entropy for meaningful aggregation of data and diachronic comparison.
Anthology ID:
W19-4722
Volume:
Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Computational Approaches to Historical Language Change
Month:
August
Year:
2019
Address:
Florence, Italy
Editors:
Nina Tahmasebi, Lars Borin, Adam Jatowt, Yang Xu
Venue:
LChange
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
175–185
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/W19-4722/
DOI:
10.18653/v1/W19-4722
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Yuri Bizzoni, Stefania Degaetano-Ortlieb, Katrin Menzel, Pauline Krielke, and Elke Teich. 2019. Grammar and Meaning: Analysing the Topology of Diachronic Word Embeddings. In Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Computational Approaches to Historical Language Change, pages 175–185, Florence, Italy. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Grammar and Meaning: Analysing the Topology of Diachronic Word Embeddings (Bizzoni et al., LChange 2019)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/W19-4722.pdf