Lexical Variation and Change

Abstract

Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work. Contents List of figures viii List of tables xii List of figures 1.1 Research perspectives within the lexeme-lection-lect triangle 1.2 An example of denotationally expanded lexicology 2.1 Semasiological structure of vest 2.2 Graphical representation of the steps in the distributional workflow 3.1 2D representation of Dutch hachelijk 'dangerous/critical' 3.2 Syntactic tree of example (3.1) 3.3 Syntactic tree of example (3.2) 4.1 Two 2D representations of the same model of Dutch hachelijk 'dangerous/critical' 4.2 Portal of https://qlvl.github.io/NephoVis/ as of August 2022 4.3 Level 1 for heffen 'to levy/to lift' 4.4 Level 2 for the medoids of heffen 'to levy/to lift' 4.5 Level 1 for heffen 'to levy/to lift' . The plot is colour-coded with first-order part-of-speech settings; NA stands for missing data, in this case the dependencybased models 4.6 Level 1 for heffen 'to levy/to lift' with medoids highlighted 4.7 Level 2 for the medoids of heffen 'to levy/to lift' , colour-coded with categories from manual annotation. Hovering over a token shows its concordance line 4.8 Heatmap of distances between medoids of heffen 'to levy/to lift' against the backdrop of Level 2 4.9 Heatmap of distances between medoids of haten 'to hate' against the backdrop of Level 2 4.10 Level 2 for the medoids of heffen 'to levy/to lift' , colour-coded with categories from manual annotation. Brushing over an area in a plot selects the tokens in that area and their positions in other models 4.11 Frequency table of context words of selected tokens against the backdrop of x LIST OF FIGURES 6.1 Models for woedend and laaiend 6.2 Models for briljant and geniaal 6.3 Scatterplot of t-SNE visualization of one model of vernielen and vernietigen, coloured by four clusters and shape-coded by variant 6.4 Scatterplot with colours for manual coding of agent type and shapes for variants 6.5 Scatterplot with colours for manual coding of patient type and shapes for variants 6.6 Cluster analyses of vernielen and vernietigen in the four diachronic subcorpora 7.1 Hierarchical destandardization as increasing distance between strata 7.2 Informalization as top-down decreasing distance between strata 7.3 Dehomogenization as increasing variation within one stratum 8.1 Visualization of a model for SECONDARY 8.2 Example workflow for calculating distributional token stability 9.1 Hierarchical (de)standardization scores in Belgian Dutch (caterpillar plot with 'models' on y-axis) 9.2 Hierarchical (de)standardization in Netherlandic Dutch (caterpillar plot with 'models' on y-axis) 9.3 Hierarchical (de)standardization scores in Belgian Dutch (caterpillar plot with 'concepts' on y-axis) 9.4 Hierarchical (de)standardization scores in Netherlandic Dutch (caterpillar plot with 'concepts' on y-axis) 9.5 Hierarchical (de)standardization scores across semantic fields 9.6 (In)f...

Ditransitive Verbs and the Ditransitive Construction: A Diachronic Perspective

“…those related to the expression of feelings and attitudes-a set of uses that is obviously quite different from the basic 'caused reception' uses of the construction, semantically. In present-day lexicology, a distinction is made between qualitative and quantitative shifts in semantic structure: the latter term refers to fluctuations in the structural weight of the various senses or clusters of uses of a given lexical item (see, e.g., Geeraerts 1997, Grondelaers et al 2007. Analogously, Similarly to the distinction between qualitative and quantitative valency shifts in individual verbs, we can distinguish between qualitative and quantitative semantic shifts at the level of the argument structure construction.…”

“…Quantitative shifts are shifts in the structural weight or relative degree of salience of the various uses of a construction: a particular subsense or cluster of uses which was quite central to the construction's meaning at a given period in time may occupy a more peripheral position in the construction's semantic network at a later time, or vice versa. (see Grondelaers et al 2007 for a brief overview of qualitative versus quantitative aspects of semantic structure). Such diachronic shifts along the coreperiphery axis can be identified through a more quantitative analysis of frequency data.…”

The semantic change of positive vs. negative adjectives in Modern English

“…Discovering the motivations that trigger the change of current meaning(s) of a word from their original usage can reveal interesting aspects about human linguistic and social behaviour. Studies have shown that the change can be in one of the meanings of a word or more or even in the word's loss of meaning LP LX (2) (Grondelaers et al 2007). Every word has a variety of senses which can be changed, added to or lost over time.…”

Competition of synonyms through time: Conceptual and social salience factors and their interrelations

“…Moreover, the lectal features of the items involved are not only able to determine the occurrence of synonyms across lectal varieties, but can also be responsible for motivating the differences of prototypical structure between synonyms. The third hypothesis is that synonym competition sheds light upon processes of language variation and change (Grondelaers, Geeraerts & Speelman 2007;Geeraerts & Speelman 2010), including convergence and divergence processes between lectal varieties and the processes of linguistic stratification and standardization (Soares da Silva 2010, 2012, 2014. Focusing on the interplay between conceptual and social aspects of language variation and change, this study subscribes to the framework of Cognitive Sociolinguistics (Kristiansen & Dirven 2008;Geeraerts, Kristiansen & Peirsman 2010), an emerging extension of Cognitive Linguistics (Geeraerts & Cuyckens 2007) as a meaning-oriented and usage-based approach to language.…”