Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "NEPHOLOGICAL SEMANTICS: Using token clouds for meaning detection in variation linguistics" "Dirk Geeraerts" "Quantitative Lexicology and Variational Linguistics (QLVL), Leuven" "The increasing importance of corpus data in linguistics creates a need for appropriate methods for retrieving semantic information from corpora. In the project proposed here, existing computational methods of distributional corpus semantics are further developed in the form of a meaning detection approach based on token clouds, i.e. clusters of distributionally similar attestations of words or expressions in a multidimensional vector space. The first phase of the project has a methodological orientation, focusing on the finetuning of such a 'nephological' method for detecting linguistic meanings in corpus data. In the second phase of the project, the method is put to use in two descriptive research lines: lectometrical research into the relationship between language varieties, and variationist grammar research." "Language productivity at work" "Timothy Colleman, Miriam Taverniers, Renata Enghels, Johanna Barddal, Peter Lauwers, Robert Hartsuiker" "Department of Linguistics, Department of Experimental psychology" "Language patterns are more or less ‘productive’, depending on their lexical scope. An interdisciplinary approach is needed to compare attested productivity, in present-day language use as well as through history, to on-line and off-line language processing, and to measure the impact of personal variables. Only in this way can one arrive at a better understanding of what productivity is." "Termwise: Creating resources specialised language use." "Dirk Geeraerts" "Quantitative Lexicology and Variational Linguistics (QLVL), Antwerp Campuses, Informatics Section, Quantitative Lexicology and Variational Linguistics (QLVL), Leuven, Computer Science Technology, De Nayer (Sint-Katelijne-Waver) Campus, Translation and Technology, Antwerp Campuses" "The TermWise Knowledge Platform is a multidisciplinary co-operation between (applied) linguists and computer scientists, financed by the K.U.Leuven Association's Industrial Research Fund, and with the explicit objective of developing user-oriented applications based on previous fundamental research. More specifically, the platform aims to develop software that will help language professionals, like translators or copy-writers, deal more effectively with specialised texts. These texts, e.g. legal or medical documents, are full of domain-specific jargon and terminololgy. An in-depth knowledge about the typical words and expressions in a given discipline is essential to create high-quality translations and texts. Unfortunately, the currently available resources for language professionals are still quite limited in several respects. Therefore, the platform will develop computational knowledge acquisition algorithms that can create rich terminological databases in a time and cost effective way. The algorithms will be tested and validated in the domain of Belgian legal terminology in French and Dutch, in co-operation with the Belgian Federal Justice Department. However, the algorithms will be explicitly designed to be generic and portable to other languages and domains. The Platform will focus on three core aspects of terminological knowledge acquisition: · Term extraction: The identification of words and expressions that are typical for a specialized domain, in this case the legal domain. The platform aims to offer a better coverage of terminological units thanks to an advanced term model which takes into account possible variation between legal subdomains, and the integration of novel methods from the field of statistical corpus analysis. · Term alignment: The retrieval of translational equivalents for terms across languages, in this case French and Dutch. The platform will optimize statistical alignment algorithms for parallel corpora and comparable corpora. · Semantic modelling: The analysis of the meaning of terms and their typical usage contexts. The platform will apply Semantic Vector Space models to the large-scale analysis of meaning-context relationships. Ultimately, the platform aims to make the acquired knowledge accessible to users in the form of a software tool that offers comprehensive multilingual terminological support to language professionals. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:Standaardtabel; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:""Calibri"",""sans-serif""; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} TermWise: Creating Resources for Specialised Language Use The TermWise Knowledge Platform is a multidisciplinary co-operation between (applied) linguists and computer scientists, financed by the K.U.Leuven Association's Industrial Research Fund, and with the explicit objective of developing user-oriented applications based on previous fundamental research. More specifically, the platform aims to develop software that will help language professionals, like translators or copy-writers, deal more effectively with specialised texts. These texts, e.g. legal or medical documents, are full of domain-specific jargon and terminololgy. An in-depth knowledge about the typical words and expressions in a given discipline is essential to create high-quality translations and texts. Unfortunately, the currently available resources for language professionals are still quite limited in several respects. Therefore, the platform will develop computational knowledge acquisition algorithms that can create rich terminological databases in a time and cost effective way. The algorithms will be tested and validated in the domain of Belgian legal terminology in French and Dutch, in co-operation with the Belgian Federal Justice Department. However, the algorithms will be explicitly designed to be generic and portable to other languages and domains. The Platform will focus on three core aspects of terminological knowledge acquisition: · Term extraction: The identification of words and expressions that are typical for a specialized domain, in this case the legal domain. The platform aims to offer a better coverage of terminological units thanks to an advanced term model which takes into account possible variation between legal subdomains, and the integration of novel methods from the field of statistical corpus analysis. · Term alignment: The retrieval of translational equivalents for terms across languages, in this case French and Dutch. The platform will optimize statistical alignment algorithms for parallel corpora and comparable corpora. · Semantic modelling: The analysis of the meaning of terms and their typical usage contexts. The platform will apply Semantic Vector Space models to the large-scale analysis of meaning-context relationships. Ultimately, the platform aims to make the acquired knowledge accessible to users in the form of a software tool that offers comprehensive multilingual terminological support to language professionals."