Vector spaces for historical linguistics : using distributional semantics to study syntactic productivity in diachrony

This paper describes an application of dis- tributional semantics to the study of syn- tactic productivity in diachrony, i.e., the property of grammatical constructions to attract new lexical items over time. By providing an empirical measure of seman- tic similarity between words derived from lexical co-occurrences, distributional se- mantics not only reliably captures how the verbs in the distribution of a construc- tion are related, but also enables the use of visualization techniques and statistical modeling to analyze the semantic develop- ment of a construction over time and iden- tify the semantic determinants of syntactic productivity in naturally occurring data

A distributional semantic approach to the periodization of change in the productivity of constructions

Abstract This paper describes a method to automatically identify stages of language change in diachronic corpus data, combining variability-based neighbour clustering, which offers objective and reproducible criteria for periodization, and distributional semantics as a representation of lexical meaning. This method partitions the history of a grammatical construction according to qualitative stages of productivity corresponding to different semantic sets of lexical items attested in it. Two case studies are presented. The first case study on the hell-construction (“Verb the hell out of NP”) shows that the semantic development of a construction does not always match that of its quantitative aspects, like token or type frequency. The second case study on the way-construction compares the results of the present method with those of collostructional analysis. It is shown that the former measures semantic changes and their chronology with greater precision. In sum, this method offers a promising approach to exploring semantic variation in the lexical fillers of constructions and to modelling constructional change.</jats:p

Using distributional semantics to study syntactic productivity in diachrony: A case study

This paper investigates syntactic productivity in diachrony with a data-driven approach. Previous research indicates that syntactic productivity (the property of grammatical constructions to attract new lexical fillers) is largely driven by semantics, which calls for an operationalization of lexical meaning in the context of empirical studies. It is suggested that distributional semantics can fulfill this role by providing a measure of semantic similarity between words that is derived from lexical co-occurrences in large text corpora. On the basis of a case study of the construction "V the hell out of NP”, e.g., You scared the hell out of me, it is shown that distributional semantics not only appropriately captures how the verbs in the distribution of the construction are related, but also enables the use of visualization techniques and statistical modeling to analyze the semantic development of a construction over time and identify the determinants of syntactic productivity in naturally occurring data

Using distributional semantics to study syntactic productivity in diachrony: A case study

AbstractThis paper investigates syntactic productivity in diachrony with a data-driven approach. Previous research indicates that syntactic productivity (the property of grammatical constructions to attract new lexical fillers) is largely driven by semantics, which calls for an operationalization of lexical meaning in the context of empirical studies. It is suggested that distributional semantics can fulfill this role by providing a measure of semantic similarity between words that is derived from lexical co-occurrences in large text corpora. On the basis of a case study of the construction “V</jats:p

Alternation-based generalizations are stored in the mental grammar: Evidence from a sorting task experiment

According to constructional approaches, grammar consists of an inventory of symbolic pairings of a syntactic form with an abstract meaning. Many of such so-called constructions can be perceived as having highly similar meanings: such pairs have been discussed under the name of alternations, especially in the domain of argument structure, for example the widely documented dative alternation (e.g. John gave Mary a book vs. John gave a book to Mary ). This paper explores what status such pairs of constructions can be given in construction grammar, on the basis of a sorting task experiment. Construction grammar traditionally recognizes generalizations of a common syntactic form over semantically similar sentences, but the status of higher-level generalizations of a common meaning over syntactically different forms is rarely discussed. In our study, we devised a sorting task that subjects could resolve by relying on generalizations of either of these two kinds. We find that subjects rely on alternation-based generalizations more often than purely constructional ones in their sorting behavior. We suggest these results show that generalizations of a common meaning between formally different constructions are plausible categories stored by speakers and should be given more attention in construction grammar research