Distributional Semantics

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Overview

Distributional semantics studies how patterns of word use reveal meaning, relationships between concepts, and changes in usage over time. It represents words and contexts with vector spaces, using methods such as word2vec, GloVe, PMI-based embeddings, and contextual language models; clustering, alignment, and distance measures are used to analyze senses and semantic change. These approaches are tested on tasks including word-sense induction, lexical semantic change, analogy, and prediction of human judgments and brain responses. They capture useful structure in language, but an ongoing tension is whether distributional associations amount to understanding or can distinguish semantic knowledge from correlations in text.

Latest papers

CardsList

22 papers3 papers in the last four weeks, down 40% on the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. SCRIBE: Scalable Contextual Representations of Interpretable Brain-Grounded Semantics

    Oct 15, 2026Camila Kolling, Omer Moussa, Emin Çelik +1Distributional SemanticsComputational Psycholinguistics

    Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS)

  2. A Statistical Inference Framework for PMI Estimation and SGNS Word Embeddings

    Oct 4, 2026Zhongqi FanWord EmbeddingsUncertainty Quantification

    Beijing Normal-Hong Kong Baptist University

  3. Compound interpretation is based on analogy

    Oct 1, 2026Tian Shen, Harald BaayenAnalogical ReasoningDistributional Semantics

    School of Foreign Languages, Northwest University, Xi’an, China · Department of Quantitative Linguistics, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

  4. Coupled Usage-Sense Processes: Temporal and Attributable Lexical Semantic Change

    Sep 25, 2026Haruka Ezoe, Ryohei HisanoSemantic Change DetectionDistributional Semantics

    Graduate School of Information Science and Technology The University of Tokyo · The Canon Institute for Global Studies

  5. Can Classical Semantic-Extractive Summarization Be Evaluated in Hindi? A Replication Study

    Sep 24, 2026Showket Ahmad Khan, Mudasir Mohd, Nasrullah Sheikh +4Text SummarizationSummarization Evaluation

    Department of Computer Science, South Campus, University of Kashmir, Anantnag, India · IBM Research, San Jose, CA, USA · Manipal University Jaipur, Dehmi Kalan, Jaipur 303007, Rajasthan, India

  6. Exact semantic readout from compressed vector representations

    Sep 16, 2026Daniel QuigleyLinear ProbingEmbedding Compression

    Center for Possible Minds Indiana University Bloomington Bloomington, IN 47408

  7. Reduplicative constructions in Mandarin: Socio-emotional profiling through distributional semantics

    Sep 15, 2026Chaoyi Wu, Yu-Hsiang Tseng, R. Harald BaayenDistributional Semantics

    1Beihang University · University of Tübingen

  8. Translation Indeterminacy and the Distributional Fallacy

    Sep 7, 2026Michael CarlLLM GroundingDistributional Semantics

    Kent State University Modern and Classical Language Studies

  9. SynFlow: A Multidimensional Diachronic Semantic Analysis Toolkit

    Aug 19, 2026Bach Phan-Tat, Kris Heylen, Dirk Geeraerts +2Semantic Change DetectionDistributional Semantics

    Department of Linguistics, KU Leuven · Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal · Vrije Universiteit Brussel

  10. Sparse Mutual Information Graph Averaging for Improving Random Indexing Embeddings

    Aug 6, 2026Sriram Loganathan, Gokul Anand, Aung Bo Bo +2Word EmbeddingsDistributional Semantics

    Department of Computer Science San Jose State University San Jose, CA, USA

  11. Examining the Limits of Word2Vec with Toki Pona

    Jun 15, 2026Daniel Zhenhan Huang, Hongchen WuText Embedding EvaluationDistributional Semantics

    Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, GA

  12. Computational conceptual history of scientific concepts: From early digital methods to LLMs

    Jun 2, 2026Michael Zichert, Arno SimonsDistributional SemanticsSemantic Change Detection

  13. Hierarchical Concept Geometry in Language Models Emerges from Word Co-occurrence

    May 22, 2026Andres Nava, Matthieu WyartNeural Representation GeometryWord Embeddings

    Johns Hopkins University · EPFL & Johns Hopkins University

  14. Chinese sensorimotor and embodiment norms for 3,000 lexicalized concepts

    May 21, 2026Jing Chen, Gábor Parti, Yin Zhong +2Distributional SemanticsComputational Psycholinguistics

    Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca · Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University · Center for Language Education, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

  15. Accurate and Efficient Statistical Testing for Word Semantic Breadth

    May 8, 2026Yo EharaTwo-Sample TestingPermutation Testing

    Tokyo Gakugei University

  16. Polish phonology and morphology through the lens of distributional semantics

    Mar 31, 2026Paula Orzechowska, R. Harald BaayenDistributional SemanticsWord Embeddings

    Adam Mickiewicz University · University of Tübingen

  17. The Limits of Learning from Pictures and Text: Vision-Language Models and Embodied Scene Understanding

    Mar 27, 2026Gillian Rosenberg, Skylar Stadhard, Bruce C. Hansen +1Large Vision-Language ModelsVLM Evaluation

    Barnard College, Columbia University · Colgate University

  18. Enhancing Hyperspace Analogue to Language (HAL) Representations via Attention-Based Pooling for Text Classification

    Mar 20, 2026Ali Sakour, Zoalfekar SakourSentence EmbeddingsDistributional Semantics

    Undergraduate Students, Department of Computer and Automatic Control Engineering, Faculty of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Lattakia University, Lattakia, Syria

  19. In the LLM era, Word Sense Induction remains unsolved

    Mar 12, 2026Anna Mosolova, Marie Candito, Carlos RamischClusteringDistributional Semantics

    Université Paris Cité, CNRS, LLF, Paris, France · Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS, LIS, Marseille, France

  20. World Properties without World Models: Distributional Associations and the Interpretation of Decoding Results from Language Models

    Mar 4, 2026Elan BarenholtzLLM World ModelsWord Embeddings

    Department of Psychology & Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences Florida Atlantic University

  21. Rethinking Metrics for Lexical Semantic Change Detection

    Feb 17, 2026Roksana Goworek, Haim DubossarskySemantic Change DetectionDistributional Semantics

    Queen Mary University of London · The Alan Turing Institute · University of Cambridge

  22. Tokens, the oft-overlooked appetizer: Large language models, the distributional hypothesis, and meaning

    Dec 14, 2024Julia Witte Zimmerman, Denis Hudon, Kathryn Cramer +9LLM InterpretabilityDistributional Semantics

    Computational Story Lab, Vermont Complex Systems Institute, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405, USA · Vermont Complex Systems Institute, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405, USA · Department of Computer Science, St. Michael’s College, Colchester, VT 05439, USA +3