Polish phonology and morphology through the lens of distributional semantics
Organizations: Adam Mickiewicz University · University of Tübingen
Abstract
This study investigates the relationship between the phonological and morphological structure of Polish words and their meanings using Distributional Semantics. In the present analysis, we ask whether there is a relationship between the form properties of words containing consonant clusters and their meanings. Is the phonological and morphonological structure of complex words mirrored in semantic space? We address these questions for Polish, a language characterized by non-trivial morphology and an impressive inventory of morphologically-motivated consonant clusters. We use statistical and computational techniques, such as t-SNE, Linear Discriminant Analysis and Linear Discriminative Learning, and demonstrate that -- apart from encoding rich morphosyntactic information (e.g. tense, number, case) -- semantic vectors capture information on sub-lexical linguistic units such as phoneme strings. First, phonotactic complexity, morphotactic transparency, and a wide range of morphosyntactic categories available in Polish (case, gender, aspect, tense, number) can be predicted from embeddings without requiring any information about the forms of words. Second, we argue that computational modelling with the discriminative lexicon model using embeddings can provide highly accurate predictions for comprehension and production, exactly because of the existence of extensive information in semantic space that is to a considerable extent isomorphic with structure in the form space.
Figures & tables
| 1. most parsable | 2. less parsable | 3. least parsable |
|---|---|---|
| clear parsing | active stem | part-of-speech transfer |
| prefix + | prefix + | prefix + |
| free base | active bound root | bound root from another part of speech |
| s+kłamać ‘to lie’ | w+płacać ’to pay in’ | s+padochron ’parachute’ |
| case | number | fem | neut | masc.pers. | masc.anim. | masc.inanim. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nom. | sg. | matka, radość | dziecko, liceum | pan | wilk | miecz |
| Gen. | sg. | matki, radości | dziecka, liceum | pana | wilka | miecza |
| Dat. | sg. | matce, radości | dziecku, liceum | panu | wilkowi | mieczowi |
| Acc. | sg. | matkę, radość | dziecko, liceum | pana | wilka | miecz |
| Instr. | sg. | matką, radością | dzieckiem, liceum | panem | wilkiem | mieczem |
| Loc. | sg. | matce, radości | dziecku, liceum | panu | wilku | mieczu |
| verb form | mood | person | number | gender | tense | aspect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| chowa-m | indicative | 1 | sg | pres | - | |
| chowa-sz | indicative | 2 | sg | pres | - | |
| chowa | indicative | 3 | sg | pres | - | |
| chowa-my | indicative | 1 | pl | pres | - | |
| chowa-cie | indicative | 2 | pl | pres | - | |
| chowa-ją | indicative | 3 | pl | pres | - |
| case | singular | gender | plural | gender |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| passive adjectival participle | ||||
| Nom. | (s)chowa-ny/na/ne | m/f/n | (s)chowa-ni/ne | m.p/m.np |
| Gen. | (s)chowa-nego/nej | m,n/f | (s)chowa-nych | m.p,m.np |
| Dat. | (s)chowa-nemu/nej | m,n/f | (s)chowa-nym | m.p,m.np |
| Acc. | (s)chowa-nego/ną/ne | m/f/n | (s)chowa-nych/ne | m.p/m.np |
| Instr. | (s)chowa-nym/ną | m,n/f | (s)chowa-nymi | m.p,m.np |
| case | singular | plural |
|---|---|---|
| Nom. | (s)chowa-nie | (s)chowa-nia |
| Gen. | (s)chowa-nia | (s)chowa-ń |
| Dat. | (s)chowa-niu | (s)chowa-niom |
| Acc. | (s)chowa-nie | (s)chowa-nia |
| Instr. | (s)chowa-niem | (s)chowa-niami |
| Loc. | (s)chowa-niu | (s)chowa-niach |
| size | rise (unmarked) | plateau | fall (marked) |
| CC | vj vl vm vr vw zj | f \textipa \textctc fs fx s \textipa \textctc sf ss | \textipa \textctc \textipa \texttctclig fp f \textipa \texttctclig sk sp st zb zd z \textipa \textdctzlig zg |
| z \textipa \textObardotlessj zl zm zn z \textipa \textltailn zr zw | s \textipa \textesh sx vz v \textipa \textyogh zv z \textipa \textyogh | ||
| CCC | - | fsx | fkw fpr fpw fsk fsp fst skj skl skr sk \textipa \textesh |
| skw spj spl spr sp \textipa \textesh spw stf str stw vzb | |||
| vzd vzg zbj zbl zbr zgj zg \textipa \textltailn zgr zgw | |||
| CCCC | - | - | fstr fst \textipa \textesh stfj vzdw vzgl |
| full data | training data | test data | |
|---|---|---|---|
| comprehension | 97.2 | 97.5 | 98.3 |
| production | 97.3 | 97.6 | 77.8 |
| change in one feature | no of forms | change in two features | no. of forms |
|---|---|---|---|
| aspect | 11 | aspect+tense | 3 |
| case | 8 | number+person | 2 |
| number | 7 | number+case | 2 |
| tense | 6 | tense+person | 1 |
| gender | 3 | case+gender | 1 |
| person | 2 |
| adjective | adverb | gerund | noun | participle | verb | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| adjective | 381 (86%) | 0 | 1 | 19 | 34 | 6 |
| adverb | 2 | 14 (74%) | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| gerund | 3 | 0 | 977 (94%) | 61 | 3 | 0 |
| noun | 43 | 2 | 55 | 574 (83%) | 11 | 9 |
| participle | 18 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2487 (99%) | 6 |
| verb | 10 | 6 | 9 | 18 | 14 | 3229 (98%) |
| active.adj.P | adj | adv | fut.V | ger | imperatV | impersV | infV | noun | passive.adj.P | past.V | perf.adv.P | presV | pres.adv.P | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| active.adj.particip | 633 (99,5%) | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| adj | 4 | 387 (88%) | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 22 | 22 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| adv | 0 | 3 | 13 (68%) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| fut.verb | 4 | 1 | 1 | 735 (97%) | 5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 1 |
| ger | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 980 (94%) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 61 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| imperat.verb | 4 | 2 | 0 | 8 | 5 | 331 (89%) | 3 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| future | past | present | |
|---|---|---|---|
| future | 750 (99%) | 4 | 4 |
| past | 0 | 1221(99,9%) | 1 |
| present | 3 | 2 | 496 (99,9%) |
| first | second | third | |
|---|---|---|---|
| first | 494 (99%) | 2 | 5 |
| second | 15 | 611 (97%) | 4 |
| third | 1 | 8 | 1713 (99%) |
| accusative | dative | genitive | instrumental | locative | nominative | vocative | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| accusative | 321 (64%) | 1 | 21 | 1 | 1 | 158 | 1 |
| dative | 0 | 170 (81%) | 0 | 22 | 18 | 0 | 0 |
| genitive | 5 | 0 | 1244 (98%) | 2 | 2 | 6 | 5 |
| instrumental | 32 | 0 | 1 | 752 (94%) | 12 | 2 | 0 |
| locative | 1 | 2 | 27 | 65 | 392 (80%) | 1 | 1 |
| nominative | 69 | 4 | 12 | 4 | 2 | 1176 (93%) | 2 |
| feminine | masculine | neuter | |
|---|---|---|---|
| feminine | 1607 (85%) | 211 | 70 |
| masculine | 165 | 1938 (88%) | 101 |
| neuter | 60 | 163 | 1446 (87%) |
| feminine | m.animate | m.inanimate | m.personal | neuter | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| feminine | 1621(86%) | 0 | 192 | 4 | 71 |
| m.animate | 1 | 1(20%) | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| m.inanimate | 133 | 5 | 1007 (79%) | 52 | 84 |
| m.personal | 42 | 2 | 155 | 705 (77%) | 14 |
| neuter | 63 | 0 | 152 | 4 | 1450 (87%) |
| singular | plural | |
|---|---|---|
| singular | 4692 (97%) | 134 |
| plural | 157 | 2409 (94%) |
| imperfective | perfective | |
|---|---|---|
| imperfective | 2643 (96%) | 105 |
| perfective | 112 | 3982 (97%) |
| / \textipa \textctc / | /f/ | /fs/ | /s/ | /v/ | /vz/ | /z/ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| / \textipa \textctc / | 207 (96%) | 0 | 0 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| /f/ | 0 | 728 (96%) | 10 | 5 | 14 | 0 | 4 |
| /fs/ | 0 | 0 | 218 (90%) | 4 | 1 | 4 | 15 |
| /s/ | 5 | 6 | 7 | 2799 (97%) | 5 | 4 | 55 |
| /v/ | 0 | 20 | 3 | 9 | 348 (88%) | 1 | 3 |
| /vz/ | 0 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 336 (95%) | 12 |
| observed/predicted | most parsable | less parsable | least parsable |
|---|---|---|---|
| most parsable | 3955 (89%) | 439 | 70 |
| less parsable | 608 | 2154 (76%) | 88 |
| least parsable | 132 | 83 | 468 (67%) |
| F | F+R | F+R+R | plat | plat+F | plat+F+R | plat+R | R | R+plat | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F | 1906 (91%) | 235 | 3 | 55 | 18 | 5 | 27 | 121 | 9 |
| F+R | 317 | 1583 (79%) | 1 | 23 | 2 | 2 | 16 | 55 | 2 |
| F+R+R | 1 | 0 | 66 (99%) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| plat | 60 | 66 | 1 | 519 (71%) | 7 | 1 | 13 | 59 | 1 |
| plat+F | 15 | 9 | 0 | 11 | 372 (89%) | 0 | 8 | 9 | 0 |
| plat+F+R | 4 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 40 (83%) | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| CC | CCC | CCCC | |
|---|---|---|---|
| CC | 3877 (85%) | 635 | 31 |
| CCC | 804 | 2528 (76%) | 10 |
| CCCC | 12 | 7 | 96 (83%) |
| category | fastText | Word2vec | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LDA | baseline | N | LDA | baseline | N | |
| person | 99% | 60% | 2853 | 93% | 84% | 1596 |
| tense | 99% | 49% | 2481 | 90% | 65% | 1505 |
| prefix type | 97% | 40% | 7997 | 90% | 41% | 5936 |
| aspect | 97% | 60% | 6842 | 85% | 59% | 4905 |
| number | 96% | 65% | 7392 | 90% | 68% | 5393 |
Appendix figures & tables29 assets
Supplementary material from the paper’s appendix.
Appendix
| full data | training data | test data | |
|---|---|---|---|
| comprehension | 77 | 79 | 75.6 |
| production | 85.6 | 87 | 53 |
| adjective | adverb | gerund | noun | participle | verb | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| adjective | 230 (58%) | 0 | 14 | 27 | 110 | 17 |
| adverb | 1 | 7 (47%) | 0 | 2 | 5 | 0 |
| gerund | 3 | 0 | 693 (79%) | 63 | 108 | 11 |
| noun | 32 | 2 | 70 | 406 (66%) | 101 | 6 |
| participle | 62 | 0 | 33 | 38 | 1810 (89%) | 93 |
| verb | 4 | 0 | 3 | 6 | 152 | 1827 (92%) |
| active.adj.particip | adj | adv | fut.verb | ger | imperat.verb | impers.verb | inf.verb | noun | passive.adj.particip | past.verb | perf.adv.particip | pres.verb | pres.adv.particip | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| active.adj.particip | 353 (68%) | 23 | 0 | 1 | 25 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 20 | 85 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 4 |
| adj | 32 | 247 (62%) | 0 | 1 | 13 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 33 | 61 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| adv | 3 | 1 | 7 (47%) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| fut.verb | 4 | 0 | 0 | 193 (76%) | 3 | 24 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 10 | 13 | 0 | 6 | 0 |
| ger | 22 | 7 | 0 | 1 | 728 (83%) | 3 | 0 | 0 | 73 | 41 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| imperat.verb | 6 | 1 | 0 | 8 | 2 | 64 (70%) | 0 | 1 | 3 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| future | past | present | |
|---|---|---|---|
| future | 214 (84%) | 28 | 12 |
| past | 16 | 958 (97%) | 11 |
| present | 46 | 32 | 188 (71%) |
| first | second | third | |
|---|---|---|---|
| first | 95 (67%) | 18 | 20 |
| second | 31 | 71 (63%) | 10 |
| third | 25 | 7 | 1311 (98%) |
| accusative | dative | genitive | instrumental | locative | nominative | vocative | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| accusative | 255 (62%) | 0 | 28 | 7 | 2 | 117 | 1 |
| dative | 2 | 119 (77%) | 3 | 11 | 10 | 9 | 0 |
| genitive | 16 | 3 | 996 (91%) | 8 | 11 | 55 | 0 |
| instrumental | 31 | 6 | 13 | 528 (84%) | 22 | 25 | 0 |
| locative | 6 | 14 | 35 | 39 | 299 (72%) | 19 | 1 |
| nominative | 83 | 3 | 34 | 15 | 4 | 964 (87%) | 1 |
| feminine | masculine | neuter | |
|---|---|---|---|
| feminine | 1177 (77%) | 209 | 148 |
| masculine | 175 | 1477 (79%) | 213 |
| neuter | 122 | 225 | 1036 (75%) |
| feminine | m.animate | m.inanimate | m.personal | neuter | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| feminine | 1206 (79%) | 0 | 150 | 15 | 163 |
| m.animate | 2 (67%) | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| m.inanimate | 157 | 1 | 694 (63%) | 53 | 199 |
| m.personal | 47 | 0 | 104 | 572 (75%) | 35 |
| neuter | 127 | 0 | 169 | 25 | 1062 (77%) |
| singular | plural | |
|---|---|---|
| singular | 1401 (81%) | 330 |
| plural | 215 | 3447 (94%) |
| imperfective | perfective | |
|---|---|---|
| imperfective | 1572 (78%) | 445 |
| perfective | 309 | 2579 (89%) |
| most parsable | less parsable | least parsable | |
|---|---|---|---|
| most parsable | 2625 (80%) | 480 | 89 |
| less parsable | 796 | 1314 (60%) | 77 |
| least parsable | 183 | 150 | 222 (40%) |
| F | F+R | F+R+R | plat | plat+F | plat+F+R | plat+R | R | R+plat | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F | 1081 (63%) | 305 | 3 | 62 | 25 | 5 | 30 | 194 | 1 |
| F+R | 437 | 899 (59%) | 4 | 45 | 28 | 2 | 23 | 86 | 0 |
| F+R+R | 11 | 2 | 44 (77%) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| plat | 98 | 65 | 0 | 159 (32%) | 11 | 0 | 14 | 143 | 0 |
| plat+F | 59 | 36 | 4 | 12 | 180 (55%) | 1 | 5 | 29 | 0 |
| plat+F+R | 11 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 19 (48%) | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| CC | CCC | CCCC | |
|---|---|---|---|
| CC | 2584 (80%) | 649 | 15 |
| CCC | 985 | 1586 (61%) | 20 |
| CCCC | 24 | 8 | 65 (67%) |
| \textipa \textctc | /f/ | /fs/ | /s/ | /v/ | /vz/ | /z/ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| \textipa \textctc | 96 (63%) | 0 | 0 | 57 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| /f/ | 1 | 406 (77%) | 3 | 55 | 43 | 3 | 14 |
| /fs/ | 0 | 14 | 156 (74%) | 10 | 3 | 8 | 20 |
| /s/ | 18 | 17 | 14 | 2015 (96%) | 3 | 5 | 30 |
| /v/ | 0 | 62 | 5 | 55 | 136 (51%) | 2 | 6 |
| /vz/ | 0 | 10 | 7 | 3 | 1 | 199 (73%) | 52 |
Distributional Semantics
Distributional semantics models word meaning from patterns of co-occurrence and context in language.
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