Using relative entropy for detection and analysis of periods of diachronic linguistic change

Stefania Degaetano-Ortlieb, Elke Teich


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.
Anthology ID:
W18-4503
Volume:
Proceedings of the Second Joint SIGHUM Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Cultural Heritage, Social Sciences, Humanities and Literature
Month:
August
Year:
2018
Address:
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Editors:
Beatrice Alex, Stefania Degaetano-Ortlieb, Anna Feldman, Anna Kazantseva, Nils Reiter, Stan Szpakowicz
Venue:
LaTeCH
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
22–33
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/W18-4503
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Stefania Degaetano-Ortlieb and Elke Teich. 2018. Using relative entropy for detection and analysis of periods of diachronic linguistic change. In Proceedings of the Second Joint SIGHUM Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Cultural Heritage, Social Sciences, Humanities and Literature, pages 22–33, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Using relative entropy for detection and analysis of periods of diachronic linguistic change (Degaetano-Ortlieb & Teich, LaTeCH 2018)
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https://aclanthology.org/W18-4503.pdf