TY - BOOK ID - 117965740 TI - Computational approaches to semantic change AU - Hengchen, Simon AU - Xu, Yang AU - Tahmasebi, Nina AU - Jatowt, Adam AU - Borin, Lars PY - 2021 SN - 9783961103126 9783985540082 3961103127 398554008X PB - Berlin : Language Science Press, DB - UniCat KW - Computational linguistics KW - Natural language processing (Computer science) KW - Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics KW - Language arts UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:117965740 AB - Semantic change - how the meanings of words change over time - has preoccupied scholars since well before modern linguistics emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century, ushering in a new methodological turn in the study of language change. Compared to changes in sound and grammar, semantic change is the least understood. Ever since, the study of semantic change has progressed steadily, accumulating a vast store of knowledge for over a century, encompassing many languages and language families. Historical linguists also early on realized the potential of computers as research tools, with papers at the very first international conferences in computational linguistics in the 1960s. Such computational studies still tended to be small-scale, method-oriented, and qualitative. However, recent years have witnessed a sea-change in this regard. Big-data empirical quantitative investigations are now coming to the forefront, enabled by enormous advances in storage capability and processing power. Diachronic corpora have grown beyond imagination, defying exploration by traditional manual qualitative methods, and language technology has become increasingly data-driven and semantics-oriented. These developments present a golden opportunity for the empirical study of semantic change over both long and short time spans. ER -