What about Grammar? Using BERT Embeddings to Explore Functional-Semantic Shifts of Semi-Lexical and Grammatical Constructions

Fonteyn, L. (2020)

Article in monograph or in proceedings

The aim of this short paper is to extend the application of embedding-based methodologies beyond

the realm of lexical semantic change. It focuses on the use of unsupervised BERT-embeddings and

uncertainty measures (Classification Entropy), and assesses whether (and how) they can be used

to (semi-)automatically flag possible functional-semantic changes in the use of the construction [BE

about] in the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA).

• Distributional Semantics
• Corpus Linguistics
• Grammatical change
• embeddings
• BERT

• All authors: Fonteyn, L.
• Editor(s): Karsdorp, F.; McGillivray, B.; Nerghens, A.; Wevers, M.
• Date: 2020
• Title of host publication: Computational Humanities Research CEUR-WS
• Pages: 257 - 268
• Link: http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2723/short15.pdf
• Name: 2723