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Article published In: International Journal of Corpus Linguistics
Vol. 22:4 (2017) ► pp.490–520

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

 | University of Birmingham
 | Université de Neuchâtel
Published online: 1 December 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.16128.per
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.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Stages of language change
  • 2.Periodization and variability-based neighbour clustering
  • 3.A distributional semantic approach to VNC
  • 4.Case studies
    • 4.1The hell-construction
    • 4.2The way-construction
    • 4.3Comparison with collostructional analysis
  • 5.Summary and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (46)
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