Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: doi:10.22028/D291-37928
Title: Using relative entropy for detection and analysis of periods of diachronic linguistic change
Author(s): Degaetano-Ortlieb, Stefania
Teich, Elke
Language: English
Title: Proceedings of the Second Joint SIGHUM Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Cultural Heritage, Social Sciences, Humanities and Literature
Pages: 22--33
Publisher/Platform: Association for Computational Linguistics
Year of Publication: 2018
Place of publication: Santa Fe, New Mexico
Place of the conference: Santa Fe, New Mexico
DDC notations: 400 Language, linguistics
Publikation type: Conference Paper
Abstract: We present a data-driven approach to detect periods of linguistic change and the lexical and grammatical features contributing to change. We focus on the development of scientific English in the late modern period. Our approach is based on relative entropy (Kullback-Leibler Divergence) comparing temporally adjacent periods and sliding over the time line from past to present. Using a diachronic corpus of scientific publications of the Royal Society of London, we show how periods of change reflect the interplay between lexis and grammar, where periods of lexical expansion are typically followed by periods of grammatical consolidation resulting in a balance between expressivity and communicative efficiency. Our method is generic and can be applied to other data sets, languages and time ranges.
URL of the first publication: https://aclanthology.org/W18-4503
Link to this record: urn:nbn:de:bsz:291--ds-379281
hdl:20.500.11880/34316
http://dx.doi.org/10.22028/D291-37928
ISBN: 978-1-948087-61-2
Date of registration: 11-Nov-2022
Third-party funds sponsorship: This research is funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) under grants SFB1102: Information Density and Linguistic Encoding (www.sfb1102.uni-saarland.de) and EXC 284: Multimodal Computing and Interaction (www.mmci.uni-saarland.de).
Faculty: P - Philosophische Fakultät
Department: P - Sprachwissenschaft und Sprachtechnologie
Professorship: P - Prof. Dr. Elke Teich
Collections:SciDok - Der Wissenschaftsserver der Universität des Saarlandes

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