Tracing semantic change in Greek derivational morphology: a computational, distributional-semantic approach

The central goal of this project is to to create an accurate, corpus-driven description of derivational morphological change in Ancient Greek (8th c. BC-8th c. AD), using computational techniques. It will take advantage of a large, automatically linguistically analyzed corpus of Ancient Greek and investigate how the usage of specific morphological constructions changes over time. Unlike previous approaches, special attention will be paid to the semantics of the constructions involved, using state-of-the-art techniques (distributional semantics) to model their meaning. By investigating specific case studies, our knowledge of Greek diachronical morphology will be greatly enhanced using an unprecedented longitudinal data-driven computational methodology, while the specific methods developed will enable future researchers to study morphological change in many other languages as well.

Keywords:Ancient Greek, Computational linguistics, Derivational morphology, Distributional semantics, Morphological change

Disciplines:Greek language, Corpus linguistics, Computational linguistics, Morphology, Semantics