2020/11/16 by Olga Scrivner, Scrivner, Olga
Arts and Humanities · Computer Science · Social Sciences · #Computation and Language (cs.CL) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Linguistic Variation and Morphology #Linguistics and Discourse Analysis #Natural Language Processing Techniques #Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2011.08262
openalex publication_date 2020/11/16 · openalex created_date 2022/10/06 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This research offers a new interdisciplinary approach to the field of\nLinguistics by using Computational Linguistics, NLP, Bayesian Statistics and\nSociolinguistics methods. This thesis investigates word order change in\ninfinitival clauses from Object-Verb (OV) to Verb-Object (VO) in the history of\nLatin and Old French. By applying a variationist approach, I examine a\nsynchronic word order variation in each stage of language change, from which I\ninfer the character, periodization and constraints of diachronic variation. I\nalso show that in discourse-configurational languages, such as Latin and Early\nOld French, it is possible to identify pragmatically neutral contexts by using\ninformation structure annotation. I further argue that by mapping pragmatic\ncategories into a syntactic structure, we can detect how word order change\nunfolds. For this investigation, the data are extracted from annotated corpora\nspanning several centuries of Latin and Old French and from additional\nresources created by using computational linguistic methods. The data are then\nfurther codified for various pragmatic, semantic, syntactic and sociolinguistic\nfactors. This study also evaluates previous factors proposed to account for\nword order alternation and change. I show how information structure and\nsyntactic constraints change over time and propose a method that allows\nresearchers to differentiate a stable word order alternation from alternation\nindicating a change. Finally, I present a three-stage probabilistic model of\nword order change, which also conforms to traditional language change patterns.\n