Lexical Database Research Articles

Partial colexifications reveal directional tendencies in object naming

Abstract Expressions in which the word for a body part is also used for objects can be found in many languages. Some languages use body part terms to refer to object parts, while others have only a few idiosyncratic examples in their vocabulary. Studying the word forms referring to body and object concepts, i.e., colexifications, across languages, offers insights into cognitive principles facilitating such usage. Previous studies focused on full colexifications in which the same word form expresses two distinct concepts. Here, we utilize a new approach that allows us to analyze partial colexifications in which a concept is built out of the word forms for two separate concepts, like river mouth. Based on a large lexical database, we identified body and object concepts and analyzed 39 colexifications across 329 languages. The results show that word forms for body concepts are used slightly more frequently as a source for object names. However, the detailed examination of directional tendencies and colexifications of word forms between body and object concepts reveals linguistic variation. The study sheds light on meaning extensions between two concrete domains and showcases the synergies that arise through the combination of existing data and methods.

Factors determining the scientific status of the theory of education – introductory notes

In the article I analyse factors determining the scientific status of theory of education. An addition to the three elements recognized by methodologists of all social science disciplines namely: a separate subject of research, own terminology and developed research methodology I add new elements such as: a lexical database for other sciences, specialized journals, prestige and organizational culture of academic institutions, outstanding personalities in science, judgments and opinions issued by state control bodies and the scientific community. All these factors determine the degree of independence maturity and prestige of theory of education among other social sciences.

French liaison is allomorphy, not allophony: evidence from lexical statistics

Abstract The exact nature of French liaison as a phonological or morphological alternation is still debated. Under the phonological analysis, liaison is allophony: liaison consonants are special phonemes that alternate between a consonant allophone and zero (e.g., [t] ∼ ∅), the zero allophone being derived from the consonant phoneme through deletion (/t/ → ∅). Under the morphological analysis, liaison is allomorphy: liaison words have two underlyingly listed allomorphs, a consonant-final allomorph and a shorter allomorph that lacks this consonant (e.g., grand ‘great’ /gʁɑ̃t, gʁɑ̃/). This paper uses evidence from lexical statistics to arbitrate between these two analyses. The form without liaison consonant (and with deletion, under the phonological analysis) has been found in previous research to become less likely with increasing lexical frequency. The paper shows that this is problematic for the phonological analysis of French liaison, as deletion typically applies more frequently in high-frequency words across languages. The paper further shows, using evidence from a large lexical database, that words involved in liaison alternations generally have lower type frequency but higher token frequency than non-liaison words when phonotactic and morphological effects on lexical frequency are controlled for. This result is in line with the predictions of the morphological analysis, as allomorphy typically involves a relatively small number of words that occur frequently. Due to its empirical nature, this argument constitutes to date one of the strongest arguments in favor of the morphological analysis.

Clustering for Clarity: Improving Word Sense Disambiguation through Multilevel Analysis

In natural language processing, a critical activity known as word sense disambiguation (WSD) seeks to ascertain the precise meaning of an ambiguous wordin context. Traditional methods for WSD frequently involve supervised learning methods and lexical databases like WordNet. However, these methods fallshort in managing word meaning complexity and capturing fine-grained differences. In this paper, for increasing the precision and granularity of word sensedisambiguation we proposed multilevel clustering method that goes deeper in the nested levels as locate groups of linked context words and categorize themaccording to their word meanings. With this method, we can more effectively manage polysemy and homonymy as well as detect minute differences in meaning. An actual investigation of the SemCor corpus demonstrates the performance score of multilevel clustering in WSD. This proposed method successfullyseparated clusters and groups context terms according to how semantically related they are, producing improved disambiguation outcomes. A more detailedknowledge of word senses and their relationships may be obtained thanks to the clustering process, which makes it possible to identify smaller clusters inside larger clusters. The outcomes demonstrate how multilevel clustering may enhance the granularity and accuracy of WSD. Our solution overcomes the drawbacks of conventional approaches and provides a more fine-grained representation of word senses by combining clustering algorithms.

The role of valence and arousal for phonological iconicity in the lexicon of German: a cross-validation study using pseudoword ratings

ABSTRACT The notion of sound symbolism receives increasing interest in psycholinguistics. Recent research – including empirical effects of affective phonological iconicity on language processing (Adelman et al., 2018; Conrad et al., 2022) – suggested language codes affective meaning at a basic phonological level using specific phonemes as sublexical markers of emotion. Here, in a series of 8 rating-experiments, we investigate the sensitivity of language users to assumed affectively-iconic systematic distribution patterns of phonemes across the German vocabulary: After computing sublexical-affective-values (SAV) concerning valence and arousal for the entire German phoneme inventory according to occurrences of syllabic onsets, nuclei and codas in a large-scale affective normative lexical database, we constructed pseudoword material differing in SAV to test for subjective affective impressions. Results support affective iconicity as affective ratings mirrored sound-to-meaning correspondences in the lexical database. Varying SAV of otherwise semantically meaningless pseudowords altered affective impressions: Higher arousal was consistently assigned to pseudowords made of syllabic constituents more often used in high-arousal words – contrasted by less straightforward effects of valence SAV. Further disentangling specific differential effects of the two highly-related affective dimensions valence and arousal, our data clearly suggest arousal, rather than valence, as the relevant dimension driving affective iconicity effects.

KannadaLex: A lexical database with psycholinguistic information

Databases containing lexical properties are of primary importance to psycholinguistic research and speech-language therapy. Several lexical databases for different languages have been developed in the recent past, but Kannada, a language spoken by 50.8 million people, has no comprehensive lexical database yet. To address this, KannadaLex , a Kannada lexical database is built as a language resource that contains orthographic, phonological, and syllabic information about words that are sourced from newspaper articles from the last decade. Along with these vital statistics like the phonological neighbourhood, syllable complexity summed syllable and bigram syllable frequencies, and lemma and inflectional family information are stored. The database is validated by correlating frequency, a well-established psycholinguistic feature, with other numerical features. The developed lexical database contains 170K words from varied disciplines, complete with psycholinguistic features. This KannadaLex is a comprehensive resource for psycholinguists, speech therapists, and linguistic researchers for analyzing Kannada and other similar languages. Psycholinguists require lexical data for choosing stimuli to conduct experiments that study the factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend, and produce language. Speech and language therapists query these databases for developing the most efficient stimuli for evaluating, diagnosing, and treating communication disorders, and rehabilitation of speech after brain injuries.

A vocabulary of meaning of designed commercial artefacts based on naturally occurring language use

This study is a survey of the English-language words that are used when speaking about meaning with specific focus on the categories of function, ritual and myth. Such words can be used in interviews, questionnaires, measurement metrics and other forms of ethnography and testing. Understanding why consumers perceive designed artefacts to be personally relevant is a commercial imperative. Previous research has suggested that three categories of meaning are commonly encountered, i.e. function, ritual and myth. They cover a spectrum from the purely instrumental to the purely symbolic. However, despite the logical and philosophical groundwork, there has been little analysis of the actual words and phrases that are in everyday use by people when describing the meanings of designed artefacts. The objectives of the study described here were (1) to identify the words and phrases that are most frequently encountered in everyday language when discussing meaning, (2) to determine for each word or phrase its degree of belonging to the formal categories of function, ritual and myth and (3) to thematically group the words and phrases into macro-components of meaning. Three different analysis were performed. The first was based on the contents of major online dictionaries and thesauri, the second was based on the results from queries of the online lexical database WordNet and the third was based on a corpus analysis approach involving neural network word embedding algorithms. Thematic grouping of the database of extracted words and phrases suggested that in all three cases the macro-components of the concept of ‘function’, ‘ritual’ and ‘myth’ cover a spectrum that can be considered to be from an essential property (‘intention’, ‘ceremonial’ and ‘belief’) to an emergent property (‘action’, ‘spiritual’ and ‘symbolism’). The list of words, phrases and macro-components provides a first empirically established vocabulary of meaning for use in design activity.

The Importance of the Method of Creating a Thesaurus in the Study of Literary Texts

The article examines the scientific methodological foundations of thesauru research of literary texts. To this end, the formation of the concept of thesaurus and the meaning of the thesaurus method, the types of thesaurus dictionary and their main function are analyzed. The importance of the thesaurus research method in the study of literary texts is determined. The research used methods such as systematization, generalization, sorting, and formulation of the material. The article pays special attention to foreign and domestic thesaurus studies, analyzes the types of thesaurus dictionaries and their features. The article compares the thesaurus and a simple dictionary, identifies a number of optimal moments and ineffective aspects of the thesaurus. In the article, the thesaurus is recognized as a special terminological dictionary within a particular subject area, the meanings of which are close to terms (words and phrases) and semantic relations between them and grouped into concepts. The thesaurus analysis method is also an important research method in modern literary science. The thesaurus research method is widely used in the analysis of literary texts, as it allows you to identify semantic connections between words and understand the meaning of a work, helps to analyze and classify words, create dictionaries and lexical databases. The results achieved in the course of the study can be used in thesaurus research, the construction of a thesaurus based on literary texts.

Contributions of the Linguistic Documentation to the Strengthening of the Ikpeng Language at School

In this paper, we present the activities and products developed during the Ikpeng language documentation project that contributed to the strengthening of the teaching of mother language of this indigenous society at the school, a space in which the use and teaching of the Portuguese language predominates. The Ikpeng linguistic documentation process was set within the Projeto de Documentação de Línguas Indígenas (PRODOCLIN), promoted by Museu do Índio/FUNAI, in partnership with UNESCO, during the period from 2009 to 2012. Among the main contributions of the documentation project are a sociolinguistic diagnosis, the creation of a lexical database, the elaboration of a descriptive grammar of the Ikpeng language, the publication of a monolingual book of traditional narratives and training courses in linguistics for indigenous teachers. The products resulting from the documentation were developed based on the demands of the school context of the Ikpeng society, to preserve and value the language and ancestral memories of this indigenous society. The Ikpeng language is spoken by the homonymous people, who live in the Parque Indígena do Xingu – MT.

Competition between parts and whole: A new approach to Chinese compound word processing.

How compound words are processed remains a central question in research on Chinese reading. The Chinese reading model assumes that all possible words sharing characters are activated during word processing and these activated words compete for a winner (Li & Pollatsek, 2020). The present studies aimed to examine whether embedded component words compete with whole compound words in Chinese reading. In Study 1, we analyzed two existing lexical decision databases and revealed inhibitory effects of component-word frequency and facilitative effects of character frequency on the first components. In Study 2, we conducted two factorial experiments to further examine the effects of first component-word frequency, with character frequencies controlled. The results consistently indicated significant inhibitory effects of component-word frequency. Collectively, these findings support the theoretical proposition that both component words and compound words are activated and engage in competition during word processing. This provides a new approach to compound word processing in Chinese reading and a possible solution to mixed results of character frequency effects reported in the literature. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Leksikos vartosenos tyrimai ir leksikografinė praktika

The article presents research on the usage of Lithuanian lexis and lexicographical works on the Lithuanian language from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day. It reveals how scientific research has been related to academic activity and lexicographic work (data gathering, analysis, dictionary development), and vice versa. Talking about the early and mid-20th century, the focus lies on the well-grounded articles on appropriate language use by Kazimieras Būga and on the preparation of the “Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language”, as well as on Jonas Jablonskis’ interest in the standard language, creation of new words, his work on the dictionary of Antanas Juška and his reviews of earlier dictionaries. Jablonskis’ own “Mūsų žodynėlis” [Our Dictionary] is also briefly discussed. Further on, the article talks about the work of Juozas Balčikonis and the beginnings of the academic “Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language”. Particular mention is made of Pranas Skardžius’ and Antanas Salys’ research on word structure and usage. In addition, various articles in language journals as well as the structure and editorial principles of the journal “Kalbos patarėjas” are reviewed. The research in the Soviet era is mainly associated with the lexicographical activities of Jonas Kruopas and Kazys Ulvydas and the editorial work on both the (historical) “Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language” and the “Dictionary of the Present Lithuanian Language”. The research interest of this period lies primarily in the analysis of lexical structure and systemic relations, whereas publication activity focuses on editing special dictionaries (such as dictionaries of synonyms, antonyms, valency, phraseology, and comparisons), and the publication of textbooks and monographs in the field of lexicology. The article gives an overview of studies that analyse the development and change of various lexical items, describe different semantic groups, language variation, and its phrasal components. Furthermore, lexical databases and the information system e.kalba are given an overview. The main focus here lies on reviewing lexical research and lexicographical projects carried out in the 1990s and the early 21st century, and on revealing lexicographical problems.

DILLo: an Italian lexical database for speech-language pathologists

AbstractA novel lexical resource for treating speech impairments from childhood to senility: DILLo—Database Italiano del Lessico per Logopedisti (i.e., Italian Database for Speech-Language Pathologists) is presented. DILLo is a free online web application that allows extraction of filtered wordlists for flexible rehabilitative purposes. Its major aim is to provide Italian speech-language pathologists (SLPs) with a resource that takes advantage of Information and Communication Technologies for language in a healthcare setting. DILLo’s design adopts an integrated approach that envisages fruitful cooperation between clinical and linguistic professionals. The 7690 Italian words in the database have been selected based on phonological, phonotactic, and morphological properties, and their frequency of use. These linguistic features are encoded in the tool, which includes the orthographic and phonological transcriptions, and the phonotactic structure of each word. Moreover, most of the entries are associated with their respective ARASAAC pictogram, providing an additional and inclusive tool for treating speech impairments. The user-friendly interface is structured to allow for different and adaptable search options. DILLo allows Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs) to obtain a rich, tailored, and varied selection of suitable linguistic stimuli. It can be used to customize the treatment of many impairments, e.g., Speech Sound Disorders, Childhood Apraxia of Speech, Specific Learning Disabilities, aphasia, dysarthria, dysphonia, and the auditory training that follows cochlear implantations.

The Children and Young People's Books Lexicon (CYP-LEX): A large-scale lexical database of books read by children and young people in the United Kingdom.

This article introduces the Children and Young People's Books-Lexicon (CYP-LEX), a large-scale lexical database derived from books popular with children and young people in the United Kingdom. CYP-LEX includes 1,200 books evenly distributed across three age bands (7-9, 10-12, 13+) and comprises over 70 million tokens and over 105,000 types. For each word in each age band, we provide its raw and Zipf-transformed frequencies, all parts-of-speech in which it occurs with raw frequency and lemma for each occurrence, and measures of count-based contextual diversity. Together and individually, the three CYP-LEX age bands contain substantially more words than any other publicly available database of books for primary and secondary school children. Most of these words are very low in frequency, and a substantial proportion of the words in each age band do not occur on British television. Although the three age bands share some very frequent words, they differ substantially regarding words that occur less frequently, and this pattern also holds at the level of individual books. Initial analyses of CYP-LEX illustrate why independent reading constitutes a challenge for children and young people, and they also underscore the importance of reading widely for the development of reading expertise. Overall, CYP-LEX provides unprecedented information into the nature of vocabulary in books that British children aged 7+ read, and is a highly valuable resource for those studying reading and language development.

Coming to terms with a socially unsustainable fine dining business model

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to examine the global perceptions of social equity in the fine dining business model as a result of the surprise announcement for the 2024 planned closure of the Michelin three-star restaurant, Noma.Design/methodology/approachThis study used critical discourse analysis to inductively analyze 91 source documents retrieved through a lexical database search. The analysis yielded five overarching themes and six subthemes.FindingsFindings from this study serve as a benchmark in retrospect for capturing a rapidly accelerating global conversation from January to March 2023 around the long-term viability and social sustainability of the fine dining business model.Research limitations/implicationsAgainst the backdrop of labor challenges in the restaurant industry due to the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath, the announced closure of Noma precipitated criticism of the stage (unpaid intern) system and the intense pressures of attaining and maintaining Michelin star status.Practical implicationsResults from the discourse analysis suggest certification for fine dining restaurants, perhaps through the Michelin Guide, for demonstrating a commitment to social sustainability as a qualifier to achieve a Michelin star.Social implicationsFindings from this research reveal a palpable change in societal tolerance for a more socially sustainable fine dining restaurant business model that advances equitable solutions for its workers while assuring the economic sustainability of restaurants.Originality/valueThis study drew upon a foodscape lens to reveal a juxtaposition between well-executed environmentally sustainable initiatives in the fine dining business model and the threats to the social sustainability among its workers.

Pristopi k izdelavi leksikalnih podatkovnih zbirk

The paper presents WordNet and EuroWordNet, lexical databases in which concepts are linked with lexical and semantic relations. In the past decade, similar lexical databases for other languages have been based on them, for which two approaches have mostly been used: the creation of independent wordnets and their subsequent integration into multilingual lexical databases, and the expansion of existing lexical databases into the target language by translating the entries and adopting relations between them. Due to the great automation potential of the network creation process and a uniform structure of the resulting databases, the latter approach has become very popular. This is why the given model was tested in this paper for its ability to create a Slovene wordnet, and the results were compared to its language-motivated counterpart acquired from the Fida corpus as well as other mono- and multilingual language resources for Slovene.

Layers of technology in pluriversal design decolonising language technology with the live language initiative

ABSTRACT Language technology has the potential to facilitate intercultural communication through meaningful translations. However, the current state of language technology is deeply entangled with colonial knowledge due to path dependencies and neo-colonial tendencies in the global governance of artificial intelligence (AI). Language technology is a complex and emerging field that presents challenges for co-design interventions due to enfolding in assemblages of global scale and diverse sites and its knowledge intensity. This paper uses LiveLanguage, a lexical database, a set of services with particular emphasis on modelling language diversity and integrating small and minority languages, as an example to discuss and close the gap from pluriversal design theory to practice. By diversifying the concept of emerging technology, we can better approach language technology in global contexts. The paper presents a model comprising of five layers of technological activity. Each layer consists of specific practices and stakeholders, thus provides distinctive spaces for co-design interventions as mode of inquiry for de-linking, re-thinking and re-building language technology towards pluriversality. In that way, the paper contributes to reflecting the position of co-design in decolonising emergent technologies, and to integrating complex theoretical knowledge towards decoloniality into language technology design.

Dynamic semantic networks for exploration of creative thinking

Abstract Human creativity originates from brain cortical networks that are specialized in idea generation, processing, and evaluation. The concurrent verbalization of our inner thoughts during the execution of a design task enables the use of dynamic semantic networks as a tool for investigating, evaluating, and monitoring creative thought. The primary advantage of using lexical databases such as WordNet for reproducible information-theoretic quantification of convergence or divergence of design ideas in creative problem solving is the simultaneous handling of both words and meanings, which enables interpretation of the constructed dynamic semantic networks in terms of underlying functionally active brain cortical regions involved in concept comprehension and production. In this study, the quantitative dynamics of semantic measures computed with a moving time window is investigated empirically in the DTRS10 dataset with design review conversations and detected divergent thinking is shown to predict success of design ideas. Thus, dynamic semantic networks present an opportunity for real-time computer-assisted detection of critical events during creative problem solving, with the goal of employing this knowledge to artificially augment human creativity.

Automatic Scoring of Verbal Divergent Thinking Tests: From Lexical Databases to Large Language Models

The article explores the evolution of methods for automatically assessing verbal divergent thinking tests. Resear - chers have increasingly focused on the ability to evaluate the originality of respondents' answers by calculating their semantic distance from the stimulus task. From 2009 to 2019, latent semantic analysis became the primary method for assessing semantic distances. Overall, in terms of internal consistency and correlation with expert ratings, its application yielded satisfactory results, maintaining an acceptable balance of quality and effort expended. However, issues emerged (dependence on the corpus used, result instability, systematic distortions related to the length of analyzed responses), prompting researchers to transition to more advanced models of distributional semantics (GloVe, Word2Vec etc.), large language models, and supervised learning. Large language models, especially those fine-tuned on creativity test materials, demonstrated higher effectiveness compared to models assessing semantic distances and approached expert evaluations. In addition to evaluating originality, the article considers works proposing methods for automatic assessment of elaboration, flexibility, associative flow, and divergent semantic integration. References to online platforms that allow for automatic assessments of originality in responses to divergent tests are provided. The issue of interpreting results obtained through large language models is discussed. A drawback of using these models is the lack of understanding of the basis on which judgments of the originality of creative products are made. The perspectives of applying explainable artificial intelligence for evaluating results of verbal and non-verbal tests of creative thinking are being discussed.

Criteria for Identifying Adjectival Participles in Lithuanian

The aim of this paper is to present criteria for identifying adjectival Lithuanian participles, which function as adjectives but have participial forms, and to explain how adjectival participles can be identified through corpus data analysis. The relevance of the research lies in the fact that adjectival participles are considered as adjectives in dictionaries. Moreover, the devised identification criteria may be of added value for part-of-speech tagging, teaching Lithuanian, and other related domains.The article examines the concept of adjectivization, proposing a potential classification of Lithuanian participles based on the extent of their adjectivization (i.e., fully adjectival and partially adjectival participles). It also suggests criteria for identifying adjectival participles. The criteria, categorized into grammatical, semantic, derivational, and quantitative, are distinguished based on prior research and a pilot study. The data for the pilot study was extracted from Mokomasis lietuvių kalbos vartosenos leksikonas (The Lexical Database of Lithuanian Language Usage), encompassing 200 most frequent verbs and 49 adjectives with participial forms analyzed across two Lithuanian corpora. In addition, the order of criteria application is demonstrated in the present paper. In total, 185 frequent verbs were analyzed in the corpora to identify adjectival participles based on the following parameters: (1) the inclination of the participle to form an adverb with the suffix -ai; (2) its propensity to generate comparative and superlative forms and be used with adverbs of measure/degree; and (3) its inclination to be used attributively without verbal arguments. Methodologically, a quantitative approach was applied to analyze the data (only frequent participle forms were examined, as it is hypothesized that particularly frequent participles are adjectival).The results show that the proposed criteria, along with quantitative information, aid in the identification of adjectival participles. Seventeen identified participles are classified as separate words rather than verbal forms by Bendrinės lietuvių kalbos žodynas (The Dictionary of the Standard Lithuanian Language); one identified participle is categorized as an adjective by Lietuvių kalbos žodynas (The Lithuanian Language Dictionary); one identified participle was found to be adjectival, and another participle was used as a pronoun, while eight identified participles are considered partly adjectival. Six identified participles should not be considered adjectival. Thus, it appears that additional criteria need to be applied, and the methodology requires refinement for a more accurate identification of adjectival participles.

Lexical diversity in kinship across languages and dialects.

Languages are known to describe the world in diverse ways. Across lexicons, diversity is pervasive, appearing through phenomena such as lexical gaps and untranslatability. However, in computational resources, such as multilingual lexical databases, diversity is hardly ever represented. In this paper, we introduce a method to enrich computational lexicons with content relating to linguistic diversity. The method is verified through two large-scale case studies on kinship terminology, a domain known to be diverse across languages and cultures: one case study deals with seven Arabic dialects, while the other one with three Indonesian languages. Our results, made available as browseable and downloadable computational resources, extend prior linguistics research on kinship terminology, and provide insight into the extent of diversity even within linguistically and culturally close communities.