Diachronic Usage Relatedness (DURel): A Framework for the Annotation of Lexical Semantic Change
This addresses a resource gap for researchers in computational linguistics, though it is incremental as it extends existing annotation methods.
The authors tackled the lack of resources for evaluating computational models of lexical semantic change by proposing a framework for annotating diachronic meaning changes, resulting in a test set with high inter-annotator agreement for 1,320 use pairs across 22 German words.
We propose a framework that extends synchronic polysemy annotation to diachronic changes in lexical meaning, to counteract the lack of resources for evaluating computational models of lexical semantic change. Our framework exploits an intuitive notion of semantic relatedness, and distinguishes between innovative and reductive meaning changes with high inter-annotator agreement. The resulting test set for German comprises ratings from five annotators for the relatedness of 1,320 use pairs across 22 target words.