Linguistic Variation and Change in 250 Years of English Scientific Writing: A Data-Driven Approach

Bizzoni, Yuri; Degaetano-Ortlieb, Stefania; Fankhauser, Péter; Teich, Elke

doi:10.3389/frai.2020.00073

Cited by 10 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…Similarly, Dubossarsky et al (2016) show that the grammatical categories words belong to play an important role in the way they shift through diachronic spaces. In our own work, we have observed that topological shifts in diachronic word embeddings are effects of the tension between lexical and grammatical changes (Bizzoni et al 2019;Bizzoni et al, 2020). Here, we build on these insights and specifically inspect tendencies towards grammaticalization.…”

Section: Computational Models Of Language Changementioning

confidence: 90%

“…For example, in a study of the conditions of sound change Hume and Mailhot (2013) show that phonologization tends to affect elements linked to extreme degrees of surprisal and that both very low or very high surprisal exhibit low contributions to predicting outcomes in a system, i.e., to entropy reduction. In our own work, we have forwarded the hypothesis that scientific English has diachronically evolved towards an optimal code for communication among experts (Degaetano-Ortlieb and Teich, 2019;Bizzoni et al, 2020). Using information-theoretic measures (relative entropy, average surprisal), we have found that scientific English drifts away from general language over time, indicated by relative entropy (Kullback-Leibler Divergence) due to distinctive syntactic usage at clause level and a preference for complex nominal expressions.…”

Section: Diachronic Language Changementioning

confidence: 99%

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Less is More/More Diverse: On The Communicative Utility of Linguistic Conventionalization

et al. 2021

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We present empirical evidence of the communicative utility of conventionalization, i.e., convergence in linguistic usage over time, and diversification, i.e., linguistic items acquiring different, more specific usages/meanings. From a diachronic perspective, conventionalization plays a crucial role in language change as a condition for innovation and grammaticalization (Bybee, 2010; Schmid, 2015) and diversification is a cornerstone in the formation of sublanguages/registers, i.e., functional linguistic varieties (Halliday, 1988; Harris, 1991). While it is widely acknowledged that change in language use is primarily socio-culturally determined pushing towards greater linguistic expressivity, we here highlight the limiting function of communicative factors on diachronic linguistic variation showing that conventionalization and diversification are associated with a reduction of linguistic variability. To be able to observe effects of linguistic variability reduction, we first need a well-defined notion of choice in context. Linguistically, this implies the paradigmatic axis of linguistic organization, i.e., the sets of linguistic options available in a given or similar syntagmatic contexts. Here, we draw on word embeddings, weakly neural distributional language models that have recently been employed to model lexical-semantic change and allow us to approximate the notion of paradigm by neighbourhood in vector space. Second, we need to capture changes in paradigmatic variability, i.e. reduction/expansion of linguistic options in a given context. As a formal index of paradigmatic variability we use entropy, which measures the contribution of linguistic units (e.g., words) in predicting linguistic choice in bits of information. Using entropy provides us with a link to a communicative interpretation, as it is a well-established measure of communicative efficiency with implications for cognitive processing (Linzen and Jaeger, 2016; Venhuizen et al., 2019); also, entropy is negatively correlated with distance in (word embedding) spaces which in turn shows cognitive reflexes in certain language processing tasks (Mitchel et al., 2008; Auguste et al., 2017). In terms of domain we focus on science, looking at the diachronic development of scientific English from the 17th century to modern time. This provides us with a fairly constrained yet dynamic domain of discourse that has witnessed a powerful systematization throughout the centuries and developed specific linguistic conventions geared towards efficient communication. Overall, our study confirms the assumed trends of conventionalization and diversification shown by diachronically decreasing entropy, interspersed with local, temporary entropy highs pointing to phases of linguistic expansion pertaining primarily to introduction of new technical terminology.

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Section: Computational Models Of Language Changementioning

confidence: 90%

Section: Diachronic Language Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Less is More/More Diverse: On The Communicative Utility of Linguistic Conventionalization

et al. 2021

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“…Convergence is one effect leading to achieve this goal. Consider results from Degaetano-Ortlieb and Teich ( 2019 ) and Bizzoni et al ( 2020 ), who show a converging tendency in scientific writing for 17th–18th century English at both the lexical and the grammatical level. They argue that a decrease in variation, i.e., convergence on particular options, is beneficial for communication.…”

Section: Investigating Gender-specific Registerial Adaptation and Innovationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Considering the first point raised by Nevalainen and Traugott (2012, p. 3), while previous work on diachronic variation has mainly focused on one linguistic level [e.g., phonology; see also sociolinguistic (Labov, 1994(Labov, , 2001 and computational sociolinguistic studies (e.g., Eisenstein, 2015;Nguyen et al, 2016)], recent studies are increasingly considering several linguistic levels and possible interplay across linguistic levels in order to obtain a more comprehensive picture of change (Bermudez-Otero and Trousdale, 2012;Broccias, 2012;Degaetano-Ortlieb and Teich, 2019;Bizzoni et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Registerial Adaptation vs. Innovation Across Situational Contexts: 18th Century Women in Transition

Degaetano-Ortlieb

Säily

Bizzoni

2021

Front. Artif. Intell.

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Endeavors to computationally model language variation and change are ever increasing. While analyses of recent diachronic trends are frequently conducted, long-term trends accounting for sociolinguistic variation are less well-studied. Our work sheds light on the temporal dynamics of language use of British 18th century women as a group in transition across two situational contexts. Our findings reveal that in formal contexts women adapt to register conventions, while in informal contexts they act as innovators of change in language use influencing others. While adopted from other disciplines, our methods inform (historical) sociolinguistic work in novel ways. These methods include diachronic periodization by Kullback-Leibler divergence to determine periods of change and relevant features of variation, and event cascades as influencer models.

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“…One of the largest curated corpora of this kind to date is the Royal Society Corpus (RSC; see Kermes et al (2016); Fischer et al (2020) for corpus creation and Menzel et al (2021) for metadata curation). The material of the Royal Society has been used in various diachronic studies to explore the development of English scientific writing and aspects such as the evolution of peer review and community-based editorial processes of scholarly journals (e.g., Halliday (1988); Degaetano-Ortlieb and Teich (2019); Fyfe et al (2020); Bizzoni et al (2020)).…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

The diffusion of scientific terms – tracing individuals’ influence in the history of science for English

Bizzoni¹,

Degaetano-Ortlieb²,

Menzel³

et al. 2021

Proceedings of the 5th Joint SIGHUM Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Cultural Heritage, Social Sciences, Humanities An

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Tracing the influence of individuals or groups in social networks is an increasingly popular task in sociolinguistic studies. While methods to determine someone's influence in shortterm contexts (e.g., social media, on-line political debates) are widespread, influence in longterm contexts is less investigated and may be harder to capture. We study the diffusion of scientific terms in an English diachronic scientific corpus, applying Hawkes Processes to capture the role of individual scientists as "influencers" or "influencees" in the diffusion of new concepts. Our findings on two major scientific discoveries in chemistry and astronomy of the 18th century reveal that modelling both the introduction and diffusion of scientific terms in a historical corpus as Hawkes Processes allows detecting patterns of influence between authors on a long-term scale.

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Linguistic Variation and Change in 250 Years of English Scientific Writing: A Data-Driven Approach

Cited by 10 publications

References 58 publications

Less is More/More Diverse: On The Communicative Utility of Linguistic Conventionalization

Less is More/More Diverse: On The Communicative Utility of Linguistic Conventionalization

Registerial Adaptation vs. Innovation Across Situational Contexts: 18th Century Women in Transition

The diffusion of scientific terms – tracing individuals’ influence in the history of science for English

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