Understanding Computational Models of Semantic Change: New Insights from the Speech Community
Submission Type: Regular Short Paper
Submission Track: Semantics: Lexical
Submission Track 2: Linguistic Theories, Cognitive Modeling, and Psycholinguistics
Keywords: semantic change detection, semantic shifts, word embeddings, BERT, language contact
Abstract: We investigate the descriptive relevance of widely used semantic change models in linguistic descriptions of present-day speech communities. We focus on the sociolinguistic issue of contact-induced semantic shifts in Quebec English, and analyze 40 target words using type-level and token-level word embeddings, empirical linguistic properties, and – crucially – acceptability ratings and qualitative remarks by 15 speakers from Montreal. Our results confirm the overall relevance of the computational approaches, but also highlight practical issues and the complementary nature of different semantic change estimates. To our knowledge, this is the first study to substantively engage with the speech community being described using semantic change models.
Submission Number: 730
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