Agenda

27 Apr 2022 17:00

Computational Methods for Tracing Word Meaning Across Time

Aula Magna Trentin, Ca' Dolfin and online

Seminars in Digital and Public Humanities

Seminars series organized by Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities (VeDPH), Department of Humanities, Ca’ Foscari University Venice Spring Term 2022 - 5 p.m. CEST/CET - (This seminar will be held only online as virtual event).

27 April 2022 - Barbara McGillivray (King’s College London) 
Computational Methods for Tracing Word Meaning Across Time

Abstract
Over time, new words enter the language, others become obsolete, and existing words acquire new meanings. In Old English thing meant ‘a public assembly’ and now means more generally ‘entity’; chill originally meant ‘to cool’ and has metaphorically been extended to ‘to relax’. The recent digitization efforts have now made it possible to access and mine large digital collections of historical texts using automatic methods and investigate the question of semantic change at an unprecedented scale. In this seminar I will present my research on developing computational models for word meaning (semantic) change in historical texts, aiming to teach computers to identify such change automatically. I will share my experience of working at different scales and in a range of interdisciplinary projects, from Ancient Greek and Latin to Charles Darwin’s letters, web archives, Twitter and emoji, and will discuss the challenges and opportunities of working in interdisciplinary projects in Data Science, Digital Humanities and Computational Linguistics.

Further info and all materials about seminars will be available at vedph.github.io/seminarseries

For registration online click here
Contact: vedph@unive.it

Language

The event will be held in English

Organized by

VeDPH, DSU

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Short Bio 33 KB
Poster 1321 KB

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