[Corpora-List] Network analysis

Fri Nov 14 17:57:57 UTC 2008

Dear Albrecht,

may I mention that empirical studies on linguistic networks show that  
they behave quite differently as "small worlds" so that they can be  
made an object of "network classification". I have recently studied  
this in a paper:

Alexander Mehler (2008): Structural Similarities of Complex Networks:  
A Computational Model by Example of Wiki Graphs. Applied Artificial  
Intelligence 22(7&8), 619-683.
http://valian.kgf.uni-frankfurt.de/mehler/pdf/Applied_Artificial_Inteligence.pdf

May I also mention a handbook article on linguistic networks in which  
I summarize approaches to linguistic networks:

@incollection{Mehler:2007:a,
   author={Alexander Mehler},
   title={Large Text Networks as an Object of Corpus Linguistic Studies},
   booktitle={Corpus Linguistics. {An} International Handbook of the Science of
     Language and Society},
   publisher={De Gruyter},
   year={2008},
   pages={328--382},
   address={Berlin/New York},
   editor={Anke L{\"u}deling and Merja Kyt{\"o}},
}
http://valian.kgf.uni-frankfurt.de/mehler/pdf/Mehler_2007_a.pdf

I hope this helps a little bit to get information about this kind of research.

Best wishes,

Alexander

Zitat von "Dom Widdows" <widdows at google.com>:

> Dear Albrecht,
>
> In general I share you skepticism about finding small world networks
> everywhere, it seems to have become quite the in thing. (I happen to
> know that there are more than 6 degrees of separation between myself
> and Julius Caesar.)
>
> However, I wouldn't be too hasty to use ambiguity as evidence against
> a networked model of the lexicon. A good piece of work that analyzed
> this can be found in the PNAS paper of Sigman and Cecch:
> http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~amag/langev/paper/sigman02pnas.html
> Beate Dorow and I have worked on this over the years, Beate's
> dissertation and Chapter 4 of "Geometry and Meaning" summarize a lot
> of findings. During this time, I started referring to ambiguous words
> in graphs as "semantic wormholes" - the fact that "change" can refer
> to different things enables you to join very distant parts of semantic
> space in a couple of hops. Ambiguity actually contributes to the
> connectedness of the graph - the thing you have to give up is the
> notion of transitivity in relationships, or any kind of triangle
> inequality in measuring distance. Either you need to split all your
> ambiguous words into separate nodes in the graph, or alternatively,
> accept that if nodes represent words which are ambiguous, distances
> are not measuring anything like distances in a metric space.
>
> This phenomenon is often used in making jokes, as your change example
> demonstrates.
>
> Perhaps my favourite of these goes something like this:
> Eager Young Minister: "Day to day, I find all the inspiration I need
> in the words of John and Paul."
> Elderly Bishop: "I quite agree ... though in my old age I've also come
> to a fresh appreciation for the words of George and Ringo."
>
> I like this one particularly because you have two semantic wormhole
> nodes pivotting in phase with each other ... though I suspect this
> analysis would rather ruin the joke for most people (which I why I put
> the joke first!)
>
> Best wishes,
> Dominic
>
> On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 3:51 PM, Albretch Mueller <lbrtchx at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  Even though small-world networks may suffice to model some network
>> connections, in general and in particular regarding linguistics, I
>> could simply see some, as they say, "questionable" issues regarding
>> the relationships among words, in a dictionary or in corpora, as
>> "small-worlds networks" and I would assume you mean the direct (,
>> naive) and straight word-to-word immediate connection of words. Here
>> are just two points:
>> ~
>>  * researchers have long suspected that just immediate, consecutive
>> immediacy does not best describe NLs even if text and talk are are
>> sequential. This is one of the reasons why they use Syntax Trees
>> ~
>>  * also, even if you would build a DS to describe the huge amount of
>> Direct (or inverted) Acyclic Graphs (ADGs) sprouting out of and
>> sinking into every word, many relationships stated and/or latent (yet
>> describable) happen while communicating which are neither direct nor
>> acyclic, e. g., jokes and metaphors
>> ~
>>  The other day I saw a homeless person on the streets with a sign,
>> that read: "I am like Obama, I want change."
>> ~
>>  change as meant by Obama: in the US government/society
>> ~
>>  change as it pertains to money: a small amount (a few coins) you may spare
>> ~
>>  Now, this person was using more than just a sentence -language- to
>> persuasively entertain a joke (, which could be read differently by
>> different kinds of people) and the relationship he expressed was quite
>> a bit more engaging than the Aristotelian, linear/proportional one in
>> "the spring of life ..." referring to our youth ...
>> ~
>>  How well -if possibly- would SWNs model these NL expressions?
>> ~
>>  lbrtchx
>>
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>>
>
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-- 
Dr. Alexander Mehler
Abteilung für geisteswissenschaftliche Fachinformatik /
Department for Computing in the Humanities
Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
Georg-Voigt-Straße 4
D-60325 Frankfurt am Main
Postfach / P.O. Box: 154
Tel.: +49-69-798-28921
Fax.: +49-69-798-28931
Email: Mehler at em.uni-frankfurt.de
Web: http://hucompute.org

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