“…Semantic drift–or its alternative labelling as change, progression, shift or development–has had multidisciplinary treatments from: sociology and anthropology looking at how language is used in society and different cultures and observing dynamic change [ 25 ]; psychology where word associations are measured for change over time or how bias is built into cognitive structures for interpreting contexts [ 26 ]; computer science where machine learning can be used to measure or predict changes in word meaning and usage or even patterns of change measured over time [ 27 ]; then in linguistics scholars have looked at the social factors of language and cultural norms, identity and how different social groups influence semantic change. This can be observed through historical frames by looking at the evolution of language over time [ 28 ] and then the changing use of general language through lexicography, sometimes evidenced through dictionary analysis and definitions [ 29 ].…”
This study investigates the phenomena of semantic drift through the lenses of language and situated simulation (LASS) and the word frequency effect (WFE) within a timed word association task. Our primary objectives were to determine whether semantic drift can be identified over the short time (25 seconds) of a free word association task (a predicted corollary of LASS), and whether more frequent terms are generated earlier in the process (as expected due to the WFE). Respondents were provided with five cue words (tree, dog, quality, plastic and love), and asked to write as many associations as they could. We hypothesized that terms generated later in the task (fourth time quartile, the last 19–25 seconds) would be semantically more distant (cosine similarity) from the cue word than those generated earlier (first quartile, the first 1–7 seconds), indicating semantic drift. Additionally, we explored the WFE by hypothesizing that earlier generated words would be more frequent and less diverse. Utilizing a dataset matched with GloVe 300B word embeddings, BERT and WordNet synsets, we analysed semantic distances among 1569 unique term pairs for all cue words across time. Our results supported the presence of semantic drift, with significant evidence of within-participant, semantic drift from the first to fourth time (LASS) and frequency (WFE) quartiles. In terms of the WFE, we observed a notable decrease in the diversity of terms generated earlier in the task, while more unique terms (greater diversity and relative uniqueness) were generated in the 4th time quartile, aligning with our hypothesis that more frequently used words dominate early stages of a word association task. We also found that the size of effects varied substantially across cues, suggesting that some cues might invoke stronger and more idiosyncratic situated simulations. Theoretically, our study contributes to the understanding of LASS and the WFE. It suggests that semantic drift might serve as a scalable indicator of the invocation of language versus simulation systems in LASS and might also be used to explore cognition within word association tasks more generally. The findings also add a temporal and relational dimension to the WFE. Practically, our research highlights the utility of word association tasks in understanding semantic drift and the diffusion of word usage over a sub-minute task, arguably the shortest practically feasible timeframe, offering a scalable method to explore group and individual changes in semantic relationships, whether via the targeted diffusion of influence in a marketing campaign, or seeking to understand differences in cognition more generally. Possible practical uses and opportunities for future research are discussed.
“…Semantic drift–or its alternative labelling as change, progression, shift or development–has had multidisciplinary treatments from: sociology and anthropology looking at how language is used in society and different cultures and observing dynamic change [ 25 ]; psychology where word associations are measured for change over time or how bias is built into cognitive structures for interpreting contexts [ 26 ]; computer science where machine learning can be used to measure or predict changes in word meaning and usage or even patterns of change measured over time [ 27 ]; then in linguistics scholars have looked at the social factors of language and cultural norms, identity and how different social groups influence semantic change. This can be observed through historical frames by looking at the evolution of language over time [ 28 ] and then the changing use of general language through lexicography, sometimes evidenced through dictionary analysis and definitions [ 29 ].…”
This study investigates the phenomena of semantic drift through the lenses of language and situated simulation (LASS) and the word frequency effect (WFE) within a timed word association task. Our primary objectives were to determine whether semantic drift can be identified over the short time (25 seconds) of a free word association task (a predicted corollary of LASS), and whether more frequent terms are generated earlier in the process (as expected due to the WFE). Respondents were provided with five cue words (tree, dog, quality, plastic and love), and asked to write as many associations as they could. We hypothesized that terms generated later in the task (fourth time quartile, the last 19–25 seconds) would be semantically more distant (cosine similarity) from the cue word than those generated earlier (first quartile, the first 1–7 seconds), indicating semantic drift. Additionally, we explored the WFE by hypothesizing that earlier generated words would be more frequent and less diverse. Utilizing a dataset matched with GloVe 300B word embeddings, BERT and WordNet synsets, we analysed semantic distances among 1569 unique term pairs for all cue words across time. Our results supported the presence of semantic drift, with significant evidence of within-participant, semantic drift from the first to fourth time (LASS) and frequency (WFE) quartiles. In terms of the WFE, we observed a notable decrease in the diversity of terms generated earlier in the task, while more unique terms (greater diversity and relative uniqueness) were generated in the 4th time quartile, aligning with our hypothesis that more frequently used words dominate early stages of a word association task. We also found that the size of effects varied substantially across cues, suggesting that some cues might invoke stronger and more idiosyncratic situated simulations. Theoretically, our study contributes to the understanding of LASS and the WFE. It suggests that semantic drift might serve as a scalable indicator of the invocation of language versus simulation systems in LASS and might also be used to explore cognition within word association tasks more generally. The findings also add a temporal and relational dimension to the WFE. Practically, our research highlights the utility of word association tasks in understanding semantic drift and the diffusion of word usage over a sub-minute task, arguably the shortest practically feasible timeframe, offering a scalable method to explore group and individual changes in semantic relationships, whether via the targeted diffusion of influence in a marketing campaign, or seeking to understand differences in cognition more generally. Possible practical uses and opportunities for future research are discussed.
“…Dyen & Aberle 1974, Blust 1987, Fortson 2003, Zorc 2004, Fox 2005, Urban 2011. Within grammaticalization studies the focus has mostly been on internal semantic reconstruction (cf.…”
Abstract:As the historical linguistic community is well aware, reconstructing semantics is a notoriously difficult undertaking. Such reconstruction has so far mostly been carried out on lexical items, like words and morphemes, and has not been conducted for larger and more complex linguistic units, which intuitively seems to be a more intricate task, especially given the lack of methodological criteria and guidelines within the field. This follows directly from the fact that most current theoretical frameworks are not construction based, that is, they do not assume that constructions are form-meaning correspondences. In order to meet this challenge, we present an attempt at reconstructing constructional semantics, more precisely the semantics of the Dative Subject Construction for an earlier stage of Indo-European. For this purpose we employ lexical semantic verb classes in combination with the semantic map model (Barðdal 2007, Barðdal, Kristoffersen & Sveen 2011, showing how incredibly stable semantic fields may remain across long time spans, and how reconstructing such semantic fields may be accomplished.
“…Prayers were, as now, often recited while being counted on rosary beads, and a phrase like to count (or tell ) one’s beads had at least two possible interpretations for someone who did not already know what was meant by bead : it could conceivably refer to the prayers that were being counted, or the beads (in the modern sense) that were being used for the counting. Some speakers apparently interpreted the meaning of bead as ‘perforated ball on a string’ (Fortson, 2003, p. 651).…”
Section: Communitarianism and Descriptive Linguisticsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…A language learner obviously cannot reach directly into other speakers’ heads to learn what they mean by a word. As a result, ‘[a]ny speaker without direct access to the intentions of the speakers around him or her must figure out what words mean from the contexts in which he or she encounters them’ (Fortson, 2003, p. 648). When the context is ambiguous, language learners or interpreters may form a theory of the meaning of a word, expression, etc.…”
Section: Underdetermination Theory‐building and Sociolinguisticsmentioning
Chomsky (1986) has claimed that the prima facie incompatibility between descriptive linguistics and semantic externalism proves that an externalist semantics is impossible. Although it is true that a strong form of externalism does not cohere with descriptive linguistics, sociolinguistic theory can unify the two approaches. The resulting two-level theory reconciles descriptivism, mentalism, and externalism by construing community languages as a function of social identifi cation. This approach allows a fresh look at names and defi nite descriptions while also responding to Chomsky ' s (1993Chomsky ' s ( , 1995 challenge to articulate an externalist theory of meaning that can be used in the scientifi c investigation of language.
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