Tracking Words in Chinese Poetry of Tang and Song Dynasties with the China Biographical Database
This work provides insights for linguistics and historical research by analyzing large-scale poetic data, though it is incremental in applying existing methods to new historical datasets.
The study compared word usage in Tang and Song dynasty Chinese poetry to identify differences in vocabulary and color terms, linking these patterns to linguistic and social changes.
Large-scale comparisons between the poetry of Tang and Song dynasties shed light on how words, collocations, and expressions were used and shared among the poets. That some words were used only in the Tang poetry and some only in the Song poetry could lead to interesting research in linguistics. That the most frequent colors are different in the Tang and Song poetry provides a trace of the changing social circumstances in the dynasties. Results of the current work link to research topics of lexicography, semantics, and social transitions. We discuss our findings and present our algorithms for efficient comparisons among the poems, which are crucial for completing billion times of comparisons within acceptable time.