SCoT: Sense Clustering over Time: a tool for the analysis of lexical change
This tool addresses the need for detailed, transparent analysis of lexical change for linguists and researchers, though it is incremental as it builds on existing network-based methods.
The authors tackled the problem of analyzing lexical change over time by developing SCoT, a network-based tool that visualizes the formation, change, and demise of word meanings as clusters, and it was successfully applied in a European study on the changing meaning of 'crisis'.
We present Sense Clustering over Time (SCoT), a novel network-based tool for analysing lexical change. SCoT represents the meanings of a word as clusters of similar words. It visualises their formation, change, and demise. There are two main approaches to the exploration of dynamic networks: the discrete one compares a series of clustered graphs from separate points in time. The continuous one analyses the changes of one dynamic network over a time-span. SCoT offers a new hybrid solution. First, it aggregates time-stamped documents into intervals and calculates one sense graph per discrete interval. Then, it merges the static graphs to a new type of dynamic semantic neighbourhood graph over time. The resulting sense clusters offer uniquely detailed insights into lexical change over continuous intervals with model transparency and provenance. SCoT has been successfully used in a European study on the changing meaning of `crisis'.