Computational Methods for the Analysis of Complementizer Variability in Language and Literature: The Case of Hebrew “she-” and “ki”

Avi Shmidman, Aynat Rubinstein


Abstract
We demonstrate a computational method for analyzing complementizer variability within language and literature, focusing on Hebrew as a test case. The primary complementizers in Hebrew are “she-” and “ki”. We first run a large-scale corpus analysis to determine the relative preference for one or the other of these complementizers given the preceding verb. On top of this foundation, we leverage clustering methods to measure the degree of interchangeability between the complementizers for each verb. The resulting tables, which provide this information for all common complement-taking verbs in Hebrew, are a first-of-its-kind lexical resource which we provide to the NLP community. Upon this foundation, we demonstrate a computational method to analyze literary works for unusual and unexpected complementizer usages deserving of literary analysis.
Anthology ID:
2024.nlp4dh-1.29
Volume:
Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Natural Language Processing for Digital Humanities
Month:
November
Year:
2024
Address:
Miami, USA
Editors:
Mika Hämäläinen, Emily Öhman, So Miyagawa, Khalid Alnajjar, Yuri Bizzoni
Venue:
NLP4DH
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Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
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Pages:
294–307
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URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.nlp4dh-1.29
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Cite (ACL):
Avi Shmidman and Aynat Rubinstein. 2024. Computational Methods for the Analysis of Complementizer Variability in Language and Literature: The Case of Hebrew “she-” and “ki”. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Natural Language Processing for Digital Humanities, pages 294–307, Miami, USA. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Computational Methods for the Analysis of Complementizer Variability in Language and Literature: The Case of Hebrew “she-” and “ki” (Shmidman & Rubinstein, NLP4DH 2024)
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https://aclanthology.org/2024.nlp4dh-1.29.pdf