Semantic Drift Research Articles

Semantic Drift in Conversations

The lability of the meaning of words has been a longstanding topic in ethnomethodology, and this review provides many specific details while analyzing the drift of the sense of words over the course of naturally occurring conversations. Ethnomethodologists do not see equivocality in the meaning of words merely as a problem for members, but they recognize that it is a resource for parties in their organizing the local interaction. Through the use of many concrete illustrations, an account of this pervasive phenomenon makes clear just-how sense develops, evolves over the course of an interaction, and is used to organize the local orderliness. Some ethnomethods used by parties to tame the developing sense for practical purposes are described and analyzed. Especially, the reflexive properties of sense-establishment are identified and described, along with their material details, and the opportunism of parties in taking advantage of the semiotic play of their talk is summarized. Finally, the components of a model for analyzing communication intersubjectively are presented.

Semantic Drift in Espresso-style Bootstrapping: Graph-theoretic Analysis and Evaluation in Word Sense Disambiguation

Bootstrapping has a tendency, called semantic drift, to select instances unrelated to the seed instances as the iteration proceeds. We demonstrate the semantic drift of Espresso-style bootstrapping has the same root as the topic drift of Kleinberg's HITS, using a simplified graph-based reformulation of bootstrapping. We confirm that two graph-based algorithms, the von Neumann kernels and the regularized Laplacian, can reduce the effect of semantic drift in the task of word sense disambiguation (WSD) on Senseval-3 English Lexical Sample Task. Proposed algorithms achieve superior performance to Espresso and previous graph-based WSD methods, even though the proposed algorithms have less parameters and are easy to calibrate.

Selected Aspects of the Semantics and Syntax of De-verbal Nominalizations in English, Polish and Irish

Bearing in mind the formal and functional complexity of the category of verbal nouns in Irish (henceforth VNs), it is not surprising that it continues to be the subject of intensive research. Much has been written on the syntax of VNs proper, i.e. verbal nouns employed in participle and infinitive constructions, and linguists are so absorbed in the debate about whether to regard them as nouns or verbs (e.g. McCloskey (1983) and Duffield (1995) are representatives of the two opposing views), that the area of de-verbal nominalizations has been neglected. This paper is meant as a modest attempt to amend this situation and present some aspects of their syntax, semantics and formal derivation. In the course of our discussion we will raise the following issues. First, we will concentrate on their argument taking properties. We will try to find out whether the binary distinction process vs. result nominals (which is considered in all studies of nominalizations) can be found in nominals derived from transitive and intransitive verbs alike. Most studies of nominalizations (Rozwadowska (1997) being a notable exception) disregard or openly exclude intransitives from the scope of their interest. Secondly, we will also consider two alternative views on the process of nominalization i.e. whether to treat result nominals as products of semantic drift (as does e.g. Malicka-Kleparska (1988)) or as products of a separate derivational process producing countable nominalizations (cf. a similar analysis proposed for English in Bloch-Trojnar (2007)). The syntactic and semantic properties of nominalizations in Irish will be compared to their Polish and English opposite numbers. Finally, we will also consider their morphophonological exponents and argue that the model of LMBM developed by Beard (1995), which separates the formal and syntactico-semantic facets of derivation, is best equipped to account for the data in question.

Brief Report: A Scale for Rating Conversational Impairment in Autism Spectrum Disorder

There are few well-standardized measures of conversational breakdown in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The study's objective was to develop a scale for measuring pragmatic impairments in conversations of individuals with ASD. We analyzed 46 semi-structured conversations of children and adolescents with high-functioning ASD using a functional linguistic paradigm. Five constructs were developed that assessed difficulties related to the pragmatics of conversation: atypical intonation; semantic drift; terseness; pedantic speech; perseveration. The scale shows good inter-rater reliability and variation in the scales is not simply a reflection of IQ or language competence. This tool represents a way of characterizing language use in ASD and is an initial step towards developing a tool to evaluate change in degree of social impairments in conversation.

A diffusion model analysis of adult age differences in episodic and semantic long-term memory retrieval.

Two experiments investigated adult age differences in episodic and semantic long-term memory tasks, as a test of the hypothesis of specific age-related decline in context memory. Older adults were slower and exhibited lower episodic accuracy than younger adults. Fits of the diffusion model (R. Ratcliff, 1978) revealed age-related increases in non-decisional reaction time for both episodic and semantic retrieval. In Experiment 2, an age difference in boundary separation also indicated an age-related increase in conservative criterion setting. For episodic old-new recognition (Experiment 1) and source memory (Experiment 2), there was an age-related decrease in the quality of decision-driving information (drift rate). As predicted by the context-memory deficit hypothesis, there was no corresponding age-related decline in semantic drift rate.

Studies in Contemporary Phrase Structure Grammar (review)

Reviewed by: Studies in contemporary phrase structure grammar ed. by Robert D. Levine, Georgia M. Green Michael A. Covington Studies in contemporary phrase structure grammar. Ed. by Robert D. Levine and Georgia M. Green. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. iv, 335. This book contains seven papers on aspects of head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG) preceded by a fast-paced introduction by the editors to the current version of HPSG (1–38) in which a number of quite different-looking notations are reconciled. A bit more explicitness would be welcome in places, e.g. examples 2 and 3 on pp. 3–4 actually encode different, small parts of example 1, and the connection among the three is not obvious. Likewise, it was not quite obvious to me how example 13 on p. 11 encodes the whole of tree 15, as the authors seem to indicate, rather than just the root of it. The account of equi and raising on p. 14 would have benefited from a couple of example sentences. However, perhaps this introduction was not meant for newcomers. On pp. 28–35 the editors give a good overview of the rest of the volume. Two of the papers analyze Japanese causatives and reach opposite conclusions. The question is whether causatives (such as tabesase ‘cause to eat’ from tabe ‘eat’) are syntactically complex structures or single words generated in the lexicon. In favor of the lexical account are the facts that the form of -(s)ase is morphologically conditioned; verb reduplication, honorification, and other processes treat tabesase (etc.) as a unit; and some causatives have undergone semantic drift. In favor of a nonlexical analysis: Adverbs can have scope over just the inner verb in a causative; a causative verb can be used with a noncausative gerundive, which takes on a causative sense, as if one -(s)ase were modifying two verbs; and there are some signs that binding and quantifier scope can ‘see into’ causatives. Christopher D. Manning, Ivan Sag, and Masayo Iida (39–79) argue that the lexicalist hypothesis is correct and that the resulting HPSG structure is rich enough to account for the putative counterevidence. Their key tactic is to move the two-level structure of a causative into its argument list, which is visible to quantifier scope and binding. Takao Gunji (119–60) takes the opposite tack, giving causatives a two-level structure in the syntax though not in the morphology or phonology. His crucial move is to make morphology a separate structural level from syntax. The other five papers are ‘A syntax and semantics for purposive adjuncts in HPSG’ (Michael J. R. Johnston, 80–118); ‘Modal flip and partial verb phrase fronting in German’ (Kathryn L. Baker, 161–98); ‘A lexical comment on a syntactic topic’ (i.e. topicalization, Kazuhiko Fukushima, 199–222); ‘Agreement and the syntax-morphology interface in HPSG’ (Andreas Kathol, 223–74); and ‘Partial VP and split NP topicalization in German’ (Erhard W. Hinrichs and Tsuneko Nakazawa, 275–332). All of them attack linguistic problems whose significance is not confined to HPSG. Michael A. Covington University of Georgia Copyright © 2001 Linguistic Society of America

Lexical frequency in morphology: is everything relative?

While it is widely assumed that high-frequency morphologically complex forms tend to display characteristics of noncompositionality, models of morphological processing do not predict a direct relationship between absolute frequency and decomposition. Rather, they predict a relationship between decomposition and the relative frequency of the derived form and the base. This paper argues that such a relative frequency effect does, indeed, exist. First, the results of a simple experiment demonstrate that subjects perceive derived forms that are more frequent than their bases to be significantly less complex than matched counterparts that are less frequent than their bases. And second, dictionary calculations reveal that derived forms that are more frequent than their bases are significantly more likely to display symptoms of semantic drift than derived forms containing higher-frequency bases. High-frequency forms, however, are no more prone to semantic drift than low-frequency forms. These results provide evidence that it is relative frequency, rather than absolute frequency, that affects the decomposability of morphologically complex words A low-frequency form is likely to be nontransparent if it is composed of even-lower-frequency parts. And a high-frequency form may be highly decomposable if the base word it contains is higher frequency still.

Knowledge Management: Semantic Drift or Conceptual Shift?

This paper offers an exploration of knowledge (KM), a concept only partially understood in domains that use the term. Three such domains are described: library and science (LIS), business administration, and organization theory. In the first (KM1), KM is predominantly seen as information management by another name (semantic drift); in the second (KM2), it appears to be brought on board as an antidote to excessive focus on process at the expense of human expertise; the third (KM3) articulates a major conceptual shift, presenting organizations as adaptive entities that co-evolve with a given environment. What distinguishes KMl, KM2, and KM3? KM1 and KM2 may be distinguished from KM3 by an over-emphasis on codification, and a myopia with regard to human expertise, tacit knowledge, social learning, trust, and intuition. KM2 and KM3 (in contrast to KMl) focus on the internal as much as the external (reflexivity) and on the critical importance of relationships and exchange (reciprocity). The authors suggest that tensions will arise in any organization committed to KM where different domains have different understandings. KM is a complex and multidimensional concept that requires diverse insights