Tracing Lexical Semantic Change with Distributional Semantics: Change and Stability

Jing Chen (Corresponding Author), Bo Peng, Chu Ren Huang

Research output: Chapter in book / Conference proceedingConference article published in proceeding or bookAcademic researchpeer-review

Abstract

Recent studies suggest an increasing interest in detecting lexical semantic changes in the context of distributional semantics. However, most proposals have been implemented with English datasets but not much with Chinese data. This paper thus presents an exploratory study using the popular Skip-gram models and post-processing operations to obtain historical word embeddings, testing whether methods in fashion could capture lexical semantic change in Chinese historical texts. Our results demonstrate a positive answer to this question by suggesting interesting cases which may have undergone the process of meaning generalization and shown competence among homographs. Additionally, our analysis also indicates that social contexts play an important role in lexical semantic change.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationChinese Lexical Semantics
Subtitle of host publication23rd Workshop, CLSW 2022, Virtual Event, May 14–15, 2022, Revised Selected Papers, Part I
EditorsQi Su, Ge Xu, Xiaoyan Yang
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Pages244-252
Number of pages9
ISBN (Electronic)9783031289538
ISBN (Print)9783031289521
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 25 Apr 2023
Event23rd Chinese Lexical Semantics Workshop, CLSW 2022 - Virtual, Online
Duration: 14 May 202215 May 2022

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume13495 LNAI
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference23rd Chinese Lexical Semantics Workshop, CLSW 2022
CityVirtual, Online
Period14/05/2215/05/22

Keywords

  • Diachronic word embeddings
  • Lexical semantic change
  • Social context

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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