Elements of Style Change
Citation:
KLAUSSNER, CARMEN, Elements of Style Change, Trinity College Dublin.School of Computer Science & Statistics.COMPUTER SYSTEMS, 2018Download Item:
thesis-fin-cklaussner.pdf (Published (publisher's copy)) 801.1Kb
Abstract:
This thesis considers aspects of stylistic change over time
with respect to a corpus of literary authors and corresponding
background change for the same period of time.
The primary focus of this thesis is the development of methods
for the analysis of authorial style over time, in particular
with respect to how ageing affects language over the lifespan, what
type of linguistic features are particularly changeable and how
different features interact with each other.
Rather than providing an exhaustive treatment of stylistic change with
respect to the examined corpora, the purpose is to extend the toolkit
for analysis and interpretation of diachronic style.
As part of the exploration of ageing effects in literary language,
a comprehensive model is proposed taking into account background
language influence when analysing effects in individual authors.
While there is evidence of underlying language change in
the variables previously linked to ageing, these
findings could not be replicated in the literary authors examined here.
In order to detect features that change over time, a prediction task
is proposed taking as response variable the year a text originated in.
Having identified interesting features in individual authors, as before
a general model is proposed to take into account how the background
language changed at the same time, thus separating effects into what is
individual and what is general.
Finally, the last part examines how features that appear in all time
instances relate and are influenced by other less regularly appearing items.
While this analysis indicates that literary language may change more gradually,
for the background language corpus temporal expressions in the news
data emerge as interesting candidates.
The results and comparisons to other genre suggest that there may
indeed have been clusters of irregular words that affected the
frequency of the more regularly appearing expressions.
Sponsor
Grant Number
Trinity College Dublin (TCD)
Intel
Science Foundation Ireland (SFI)
Adapt
Author's Homepage:
http://people.tcd.ie/klaussncDescription:
APPROVED
Author: KLAUSSNER, CARMEN
Advisor:
VOGEL, CARLPublisher:
Trinity College Dublin. School of Computer Science & Statistics. Discipline of Computer ScienceType of material:
ThesisCollections:
Availability:
Full text availableKeywords:
Diachronic Analysis, Stylochronometry, Style Analysis, StatisticsLicences: