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Cunha, E. Landulfo Teixeira Paradela (2020)

Contributions to the computational processing of diachronic linguistic corpora

Doctoral Thesis
Computer-assisted corpus linguistics is one of the main points of convergence between linguistic and computational methods. In particular, the use of diachronic linguistic corpora provides opportunities for the quantitative analysis of phenomena concerning language change through time. This dissertation offers contributions to three of the stages of the research involving diachronic corpora: (a) corpus building and compilation; (b) designing of tools and algorithms for data exploration; and (c) data analysis for linguistic, cultural and historical research. Two resources are first presented: a Web scraper of comments from news portals; and a diachronic corpus composed of comments published in a news website. Then, I propose a generalizable method to assist in the identification of periods of establishment and obsolescence of linguistic items in a diachronic corpus based on the frequency of these items in the corpus. This method may be employed for the analysis of any collection...Show moreComputer-assisted corpus linguistics is one of the main points of convergence between linguistic and computational methods. In particular, the use of diachronic linguistic corpora provides opportunities for the quantitative analysis of phenomena concerning language change through time. This dissertation offers contributions to three of the stages of the research involving diachronic corpora: (a) corpus building and compilation; (b) designing of tools and algorithms for data exploration; and (c) data analysis for linguistic, cultural and historical research. Two resources are first presented: a Web scraper of comments from news portals; and a diachronic corpus composed of comments published in a news website. Then, I propose a generalizable method to assist in the identification of periods of establishment and obsolescence of linguistic items in a diachronic corpus based on the frequency of these items in the corpus. This method may be employed for the analysis of any collection of linguistic items, regardless of language or historical period. Finally, I describe how diachronic corpora might be used for quantitative linguistic investigation by proposing a framework centered on the investigation of vocabulary through a diachronic approach, and demonstrate its applicability by analyzing the use of the term 'fake news' in the media.
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Corpus linguistics
Computer-assisted linguistics
Diachronic studies
Computational methods in linguistics
Corpus building and compilation
Comments from news portals and websites
Algorithms for historical linguistics
Fake news
All authors
Cunha, E. Landulfo Teixeira Paradela
Supervisor
Adelaar, W.F.H.; Almeida, V.A.F.
Co-supervisor
Wichmann, S.K.
Committee
Klamer, M.A.F.; Prokić, J.; Burger, P.; Boer, B. de; Hilpert, M.
Qualification
Doctor (dr.)
Awarding Institution
Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University
Date
2020-03-19
Title of host publication
LOT dissertation series
Publisher
Amsterdam: LOT
ISBN (print)
9789460933431

Publication Series

Name
558

Funding

Sponsorship
CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior, Brazil), CNPq (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, Brazil)