The meaning of a slang term can vary in different communities. However, slang semantic variation is not well understood and under-explored in the natural language processing of slang. One existing view argues that slang semantic variation is driven by culture-dependent communicative needs. An alternative view focuses on slang's social functions suggesting that the desire to foster semantic distinction may have led to the historical emergence of community-specific slang senses. We explore these theories using computational models and test them against historical slang dictionary entries, with a focus on characterizing regularity in the geographical variation of slang usages attested in the US and the UK over the past two centuries. We show that our models are able to predict the regional identity of emerging slang word meanings from historical slang records. We offer empirical evidence that both communicative need and semantic distinction play a role in the variation of slang meaning yet their relative importance fluctuates over the course of history. Our work offers an opportunity for incorporating historical cultural elements into the natural language processing of slang.
翻译:一种现有观点认为, slan 语义变异是由依赖文化的交流需要驱动的。另一种观点侧重于 slan 的社会功能,表明促进语义区分的愿望可能导致社区特殊语义感的历史出现。我们利用计算模型来探索这些理论,并用历史的 slan 字典条目来测试这些理论,重点是将过去两个世纪在美国和英国所见的语义使用地理变异的规律化。我们表明,我们的模式能够预测出历史语义记录中新出现的语义含义的区域特性。我们提供了经验证据,证明交流需要和语义区分在变异 slan 含义方面起着作用,但在历史过程中,它们相对的重要性也在波动。我们的工作提供了一个机会,将历史文化要素纳入 slan 的自然语言处理过程。