Crosslinguistic Corpus Studies in Linguistic Typology

Schnell, Stefan; Schiborr, Nils Norman

doi:10.1146/annurev-linguistics-031120-104629

Cited by 12 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…Levshina 2022). Although more research is needed to test these preliminary conclusions and formulate best practices, it seems that computing gradient measures of word order from corpora is a realistic task if sufficient care is taken (see also Schnell and Schiborr [2022] for a thorough review of practical and conceptual concerns associated with using corpora for studying typology).…”

Section: The Influence Of Register Text Type and Modalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Why we need a gradient approach to word order

Levshina¹,

Namboodiripad²,

Allassonnière-Tang³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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This paper argues for a gradient approach to word order, which treats word order preferences, both within and across languages, as a continuous variable. Word order variability should be regarded as a basic assumption, rather than as something exceptional. Although this approach follows naturally from the emergentist usage-based view of language, we argue that it can be beneficial for all frameworks and linguistic domains, including language acquisition, processing, typology, language contact, language evolution and change, variationist linguistics and formal approaches. Gradient approaches have been very fruitful in some domains, such as language processing, but their potential is not fully realized yet. This may be due to practical reasons. We discuss the most pressing methodological challenges in corpus-based and experimental research of word order and propose some solutions and best practices.

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Section: The Influence Of Register Text Type and Modalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Why we need a gradient approach to word order

Levshina¹,

Namboodiripad²,

Allassonnière-Tang³

et al. 2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Such data allow us to create sets of languages. Working with a linguistic corpus helps us to obtain a deeper and more quantitative knowledge of cross-linguistic tendencies [52,53]. The problem with this methodology is that the available data are still very limited given its novelty and level of depth, especially in comparison with other resources based on manual notes such as the World Atlas of Linguistic Structures (WALS) [48,50].…”

Section: A Fuzzy Universal Grammar With a Representative Setmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Fuzzy Grammar for Evaluating Universality and Complexity in Natural Language

et al. 2022

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The paper focuses on linguistic complexity and language universals, which are two important and controversial issues in language research. A Fuzzy Property Grammar for determining the degree of universality and complexity of a natural language is introduced. In this task, the Fuzzy Property Grammar operated only with syntactic constraints. Fuzzy Natural Logic sets the fundamentals to express the notions of universality and complexity as evaluative expressions. The Fuzzy Property Grammar computes the constraints in terms of weights of universality and calculates relative complexity. We present a proof-of-concept in which we have generated a grammar with 42B syntactic constraints. The model classifies constraints in terms of low, medium, and high universality and complexity. Degrees of relative complexity in terms of similarity from a correlation matrix have been obtained. The results show that the architecture of a Universal Fuzzy Property Grammar is flexible, reusable, and re-trainable, and it can easily take into account new sets of languages, perfecting the degree of universality and complexity of the linguistic constraints as well as the degree of complexity between languages.

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“…To evaluate how individuals in distant cultures-in time, geography, and customs-may have experienced emotions, it is possible to analyse emotion expressions in written documents, which have been dutifully compiled and analysed in many languages 6 . Semantic analysis of text corpora from the premodern era can give us a glimpse into the emotional lives of civilisations that have long ago ceased to be [7][8][9] .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Embodied Emotions in Ancient Neo-Assyrian Texts Revealed by Bodily Mapping of Emotional Semantics

Lahnakoski,

Bennett,

Nummenmaa

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Autonomic activity during emotions is subjectively felt in the body via interoceptive and somatosensory pathways resulting in emotion specific bodily sensations. Here we utilized this relationship and computational linguistic methods to map a representation of emotions in ancient texts. We analysed Neo-Assyrian texts from 934–612 BCE to discern consistent relationships between linguistic expressions related to both emotions and bodily sensations. We then computed statistical regularities between emotion terms and words referring to body parts, and back-projected the resulting emotion body part relationships on a standard body template, yielding bodily sensation maps for the emotions. We found consistent embodied patterns for eighteen distinct emotions. Hierarchical clustering revealed four main clusters of bodily emotion categories, two clusters of mainly positive emotions, one large cluster of mainly negative emotions and one of empathy and schadenfreude. These results reveal the historical use of embodied language pertaining to human emotions. Our data-driven tool projecting emotional lexical spaces on a human body provides a novel method for comparing textual embodiment patterns across different languages and cultures across time.

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Crosslinguistic Corpus Studies in Linguistic Typology

Cited by 12 publications

References 68 publications

Why we need a gradient approach to word order

Why we need a gradient approach to word order

A Fuzzy Grammar for Evaluating Universality and Complexity in Natural Language

Embodied Emotions in Ancient Neo-Assyrian Texts Revealed by Bodily Mapping of Emotional Semantics

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