Word Embeddings: Reliability & Semantic Change

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Word Embeddings: Reliability & Semantic Change is written by Johannes Hellrich and published by SAGE Publications Limited. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 1614999953 (ISBN 10) and 9781614999959 (ISBN 13).

Word embeddings are a form of distributional semantics increasingly popular for investigating lexical semantic change. However, typical training algorithms are probabilistic, limiting their reliability and the reproducibility of studies. Johannes Hellrich investigated this problem both empirically and theoretically and found some variants of SVD-based algorithms to be unaffected. Furthermore, he created the JeSemE website to make word embedding based diachronic research more accessible. It provides information on changes in word denotation and emotional connotation in five diachronic corpora. Finally, the author conducted two case studies on the applicability of these methods by investigating the historical understanding of electricity as well as words connected to Romanticism. They showed the high potential of distributional semantics for further applications in the digital humanities.