1 / 17

Semantic Drift between the Testaments

Semantic Drift between the Testaments. Using Collocation Analysis to Find Theological Significance Matt Munson. Theological Background. Use of Old Testament in the New Similarities Differences Relative Meaning But re-use goes beyond quotations

asa
Download Presentation

Semantic Drift between the Testaments

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Semantic Drift betweenthe Testaments UsingCollocation Analysis to Find TheologicalSignificance Matt Munson

  2. Theological Background • Useof Old Testament in the New • Similarities • Differences • Relative Meaning • But re-usegoesbeyondquotations • Whataboutthesimilarities, differences, and relative meaningsof individual words • Can wedetecttheologicalsignificanceevenhere?

  3. Linguistic Background - Collocations • Firth, “Youshallknow a wordbythecompanyitkeeps!” • Harris, “If we consider words or morphemes A and B to be more different in meaning than A and C, then we will often find that the distributions of A and B are more different than the distributions of A and C. In other words, difference of meaning correlates with difference of distribution.”

  4. My Hypothesis • Linguistic: • Bycomparingthecollocationwordfieldsofthe same targetword in theSeptuagintandthe New Testament, onecandetectwhichwordshavechanged in meaningthemostfromone Testament totheother. • Theological: • Further investigationofhowthecollocationfieldshavechanged will leadtoinsightsconcerningthetheologicalchangesfromthe LXX tothe NT.

  5. MyMethod • LemmatizedGreek Texts • Collocation span of 4L and 4R • Co-occurrencecounts • Log likelihoodsignificance • Cosinesimilarityof log likelihoodtables • Comparisonof log likelihoodandcosinesimilaritytablesforeachlemma

  6. LemmatizedGreek Texts • HighlyInflected Language • Nouns: 8 distinctforms • Verbs: wouldyoubelieveover 200 forms? • Not lemmatizingwouldmakeeachoftheseformsappeartothecomputertobe a uniqueword • Could be interesting but not enough data to overcome atomization

  7. Collocation Span of 4L and 4R • Experiments have shown this to be the most effective span

  8. Co-occurrence Counts • Simple counts of how often a collocateoccursin the given span of the target • Example: • 'ἔντιμος' 1, 'ἀπόδεκτος' 1, προευαγγελίζομαι' 1, 'γεννάω' 11, 'κιθάρα' 1, 'ὀλίγος' 1, 'πρό' 4, 'ἀνοίγω' 2, 'ἐπιποθέω' 2, 'ἀστεῖος' 1, 'ἔμπροσθεν' 6, 'μετάνοια' 7, 'ἐκπορεύομαι' 2, 'ὅτε' 9, 'οἰκτιρμός' 2, 'Ῥαιφάν' 1, 'ὅτι' 122…

  9. Log LikelihoodSignificance I • “Significant collocation is regular collocation between two items, such that they co-occur more often than their respective frequencies.” (Léon, 14) • “log-likelihood measures the strength of association between words by comparing the occurrences of words respectively and their occurrences together.” • also appropriate for sparse data • This measures syntagmatic relationships • More Information: TU Darmstadt LinguisticsWeb

  10. Log LikelihoodSignificance IITables

  11. CosineSimilarityof Log-LikelihoodTables • Cosinesimilarityisoftenusedtomeasurethesimilaritybetweenwordfrequencylists • I usedittocompare log likelihoodtables, whichhavethe same form asfrequencylists • I compared all thetables in the LXX toeachotherand all in the NT toeachother • I also comparedthe same lemmata in each Testament toeachother • This measuresparadigmaticrelationships

  12. CosineSimilarityResults Withineach Testament Betweenthe Testaments

  13. Compare Log LikelihoodTables • This will showwhichcollocatesoccurmoresignificantlywiththelemma in the LXX andthe NT • Positive means more significantly in the LXX, negative in the NT • Syntagmatic comparison • Will show change in usage but not change in meaning directly

  14. Compare Log LikelihoodTables - Results

  15. CompareCosineSimilarityTables • This will showtowhichotherlemmataeachlemma in each Testament attracts • The value will be positive if it they are more attracted in the LXX, negative if in the NT • Paradigmatic comparison • These comparisons should suggest meaning change

  16. CompareCosineSimilarityTables - Results

  17. Next Steps • Finish comparison of LL and CS tables • Include other information in analysis • POS Information • Semantic dependencies • Could help to account for Greek sentencestructure • Remove information from the analysis • Stop words • Certain parts of speech (e.g., adverbs, particles) • Close-readinganalysisoftheresults

More Related