SSiW


In Natural Language Processing (NLP), combinations of words are considered multi-word expressions (MWEs) if they are semantically idiosyncratic to some degree, i.e., the meaning of the combination is not entirely (or even not at all) predictable from the meanings of the constituents. MWEs subsume multiple morpho-syntactic types, including noun compounds (such as flea market) and particle verbs (such as give up). They have been explored extensively and across research disciplines from synchronic perspectives, but state-of-the-art studies are lacking empirical large-scale approaches towards diachronic models of MWE meaning.

Our project SemChangeMWE goes beyond the restricted synchronic concept of MWE meaning and provides a novel perspective on MWE emergence, MWE meaning changes and MWE compositionality (i.e., meaning transparency) by computationally modelling their diachronic properties and changes of properties. The project brings together our expertises in (a) computational models of MWE compositionality and meaning analogy, (b) computational models of diachronic meaning changes and meaning divergences in language variation, and (c) datasets of meaning components and meaning relatedness, in order to address the lack of computational diachronic models of MWE meaning.





The project SemChangeMWE is a SemRel project. It is funded by the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the German Research Foundation) under research grant SCHU 2580/5-1.


Researchers


Publications

Chris Jenkins, Filip Miletic, Sabine Schulte im Walde
To Split or Not to Split: Composing Compounds in Contextual Vector Spaces [pdf/poster]
In: Proceedings of the 2023 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP). Singapore, December 2023.

Maximilian Maurer, Chris Jenkins, Filip Miletic, Sabine Schulte im Walde
Classifying Noun Compounds for Present-Day Compositionality: Contributions of Diachronic Frequency and Productivity Patterns [pdf]
In: Proceedings of the 19th Conference on Natural Language Processing (KONVENS). Ingolstadt, Germany, September 2023.

Filip Miletic, Sabine Schulte im Walde
A Systematic Search for Compound Semantics in Pretrained BERT Architectures [pdf/video/poster]
In: Proceedings of the 17th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL). Dubrovnik, Croatia, May 2023.

Sabine Schulte im Walde
Collecting and Investigating Features of Compositionality Ratings [preprint pdf/resource]
In: Voula Giouli / Verginica Barbu Mititelu (eds), Multiword Expressions in Lexical Resources. Linguistic, Lexicographic and Computational Perspectives. Berlin: Language Science Press, "Phraseology and Multiword Expressions".


Talks + Posters with Abstracts

Chris Jenkins
Composing Noun Compounds in Vector Spaces [abstract]
DGfS-CL Poster Session 2023 at the Annual Meeting of the DGfS
Universität Köln, March 8-10, 2023

Chris Jenkins, Filip Miletic, Sabine Schulte im Walde
Identification of Shifts in Metaphorical Usage of Compound Nouns over Time [abstract]
Workshop on Computational Approaches to Metaphor and Figurative Language at the Annual Meeting of the DGfS
Universität Bochum, February 28-March 1, 2024

Maximilian Maurer, Chris Jenkins, Filip Miletic, Sabine Schulte im Walde
Quantifying Changes in English Noun Compound Productivity and Meaning [abstract]
Workshop on Computational Models of Diachronic Language Change at the 26th International Conference on Historical Linguistics
Universität Heidelberg, September 4-8, 2023

Sabine Schulte im Walde
Feature-based Compositionality Ratings for Noun Compounds [abstract/poster]
DGfS-CL Poster Session 2023 at the Annual Meeting of the DGfS
Universität Köln, March 8-10, 2023


Invited Talks

Sabine Schulte im Walde
Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, DH Colloquium
Collecting and Investigating Features of Human Semantic Ratings and Resources
February 27, 2023

Sabine Schulte im Walde
Workshop on Multiword Expressions (MWE)
Figurative Language in Noun Compound Models across Target Properties, Domains and Time
Marseille, France, June 25, 2022

Sabine Schulte im Walde
Universität Trier, Kolloquium des Forschungsverbunds Patterns
Synchronic and Diachronic Distributional Models of Compound-Constituent Meaning Interactions
March 14, 2022


Resources

Feature-Comp-NN
A Feature-based Collection of Compositionality Ratings for German Noun-Noun Compounds