Hands-on Distributional Semantics (ESSLLI 2021)

Hands-on Distributional Semantics – From first steps to interdisciplinary applications
Foundational course at ESSLLI 2021, online, August 9–13, 2021

• Software & data sets
• Bibliography & links

• check this page for updates and instructions by Friday, August 6th, 2021 (late afternoon CEST)
• please install software and download data sets on the weekend before the course (i.e. on August 7th or 8th) as we may be making changes or uploading new versions until then

Distributional semantic models (DSM) are based on the assumption that the meaning of a word can (at least to a certain extent) be inferred from its usage, i.e. its distribution in text. Therefore, these models dynamically build semantic representations through a statistical analysis of the contexts in which words occur. DSMs are a promising technique for solving the lexical acquisition bottleneck by unsupervised learning, and their distributed representation provides a cognitively plausible, robust and flexible architecture for the organisation and processing of semantic information.

In this introductory course we will highlight the interdisciplinary potential of DSM beyond standard semantic similarity tasks, with applications in cognitive modeling and theoretical linguistics. This course aims to equip participants with the background knowledge and skills needed to build different kinds of DSM representations and apply them to a wide range of tasks. There will be a particular focus on practical exercises with the user-friendly R software package wordspace and various pre-built models.

Lecturers: Stefan Evert (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg) & Gabriella Lapesa (IMS, U Stuttgart)

Please make sure you have up-to-date versions of R and RStudio to participate in the hands-on exercises.

We will answer questions during lectures and in the afternoon via the course's Slack channel. Registered participants of ESSLLI 2021 should have access to this channel.

Further information on required software packages and data sets will be provided by Saturday, August 7th, 2021.

Handouts and other materials will be made available along with the course.