Secrets of Lexical Conventionalization: A Quantitative and Qualitative Exploratory Analysis on Linguistic Factors
Date Issued
2015
Date
2015
Author(s)
Wang, Po-Ya Angela
Abstract
Previous studies have many insights in understanding lexical items. They can be generally captured into two parts: linguistic analysis and application. Linguistic analysis mainly includes three angles: studies on historical development of linguistic phenomenon from Historical Linguistics, probes on synchronic emergence of neologisms from Lexical Semantics, and prediction models built for understanding survival of words from Computational Linguistics. They can all be applied on including words for Lexicology, designing language teaching materials, and constructing resources for Natural Language Processing. However, there is rarely a single work include quantitative and qualitative methods simultaneously. Second, the generality of included target words in previous studies needs reconsideration. Meanwhile, temporal information of lexical items and various linguistic aspects should be invited to probe deeper for understanding factors contributing to conventionalization of a word. The conceptual associations of organization in mental lexicon and temporal accumulation for mental lexicon should all be considered when facing this issue. Thus, this thesis is aimed to conduct quantitative profiling and qualitative analysis as well as to apply them in constructing lexical resources with proposing three life stages of lexical items (diffusion, conventionalization, and inactivation), including target words from different temporal points, and adopting linguistic variables from six linguistic aspects (phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics). In quantitative profiling, the linear regression model has built to distinguish words from different temporal points. The result shows that pragmatics can best account behavioral performance of words before 1950 and syntax can best capture words after 1950, which implies that words live longer may correlated with rich experiential and pragmatic using knowledge, but for those who are born recently their structurally syntactic compatibility plays important role in deciding their fluctuation in use. Diffused words are similar to words existing over centuries in their Revised Constant U. From logistic regression model it is found that number of syllable, number of near-synonym, number of synonym, activeness in used in comments, and borrowing from other language or not are statistically significant variables that distinguish diffused words and words existing over centuries. On the other hand, words born after 1950 and diffused words are quite similar in their linguistic characteristics. Prediction model based on training data from words after 1950 are built to foretell potential life of diffused words. It shows that number of types co-occurring before target words is statistically valued in prediction. With words before 1950 and recent diffused words as test data the accuracy of model reaches 0.6335. Qualitative analysis on competitions among words from the same synset indicates that structural compatibility and involved conceptual relations may be the key for one lexical item to winning over the other synonymous member. Besides, words coming from different temporal points show differences in their activeness in being used in comments and posts on PTT. Diffused words are more active in comments, which implies they are more correlated with feedback oriented oral style and diffused in interaction. With these findings we can further apply them on proposing suggestions for lexicology. Pragmatically stable in use, syntactic compatibility, and semantically number of senses are taken as standard to expanding inclusion of words. The updated inclusion of popularly used variants, more stable semantic representation, and words lexicalized from the same conceptual experiences indicates the inclusiveness of proposed standards.
Subjects
conventionalization
life cycle of words
neologism
diffusion
internet language
language change
quantitative linguistics
corpus
lexicology
Type
thesis
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Loading...
Name
ntu-104-R01142009-1.pdf
Size
23.54 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum
(MD5):541382d72a19cf40c0603f2917005c84