التفاصيل البيبلوغرافية
| العنوان: |
Local similarity and global variability characterize the semantic space of human languages. |
| المؤلفون: |
Lewis, Molly, Cahill, Aoife, Madnani, Nitin, Evans, James |
| المصدر: |
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America; 12/19/2023, Vol. 120 Issue 51, p1-10, 35p |
| مصطلحات موضوعية: |
LANGUAGE models, LANGUAGE & languages, CORPORA, UNIVERSAL language, NATIVE language, ENGLISH as a foreign language, COLOR in nature, BILINGUAL education |
| Reviews & Products: |
WIKIPEDIA |
| مستخلص: |
How does meaning vary across the world’s languages? Scholars recognize the existence of substantial variability within specific domains, ranging from nature and color to kinship. The emergence of large language models enables a systems-level approach that directly characterizes this variability through comparison of word organization across semantic domains. Here, we show that meanings across languages manifest lower variability within semantic domains and greater variability between them, using models trained on both 1) large corpora of native language text comprising Wikipedia articles in 35 languages and also 2) Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) essays written by 38,500 speakers from the same native languages, which cluster into semantic domains. Concrete meanings vary less across languages than abstract meanings, but all vary with geographical, environmental, and cultural distance. By simultaneously examining local similarity and global difference, we harmonize these findings and provide a description of general principles that govern variability in semantic space across languages. In this way, the structure of a speaker’s semantic space influences the comparisons cognitively salient to them, as shaped by their native language, and suggests that even successful bilingual communicators likely think with “semantic accents” driven by associations from their native language while writing English. These findings have dramatic implications for language education, cross-cultural communication, and literal translations, which are impossible not because the objects of reference are uncertain, but because associations, metaphors, and narratives interlink meanings in different, predictable ways from one language to another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
|
Copyright of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America is the property of National Academy of Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.) |
| قاعدة البيانات: |
Complementary Index |
