Exploring Semanticity for Content and Function Word Distinction in Catalan

• Published in: Languages
• Main Authors: Neus Català, Jaume Baixeries, Antoni Hernández-Fernández
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2024-05-01
• Subjects: semanticity; function words; content words; semantic networks; Zipf’s law of meaning; word class
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/9/5/179

In the realm of linguistics, the concept of “semanticity” was recently introduced as a novel measure designed to study linguistic networks. In a given text, semanticity is defined as the ratio of the potential number of meanings associated with a word to the number of different words with which it is linguistically linked. This concept provides a quantitative indicator that reflects a word’s semantic complexity and its role in a language. In this pilot study, we applied the semanticity measure to the Catalan language, aiming to investigate its effectiveness in automatically distinguishing content words from function words. For this purpose, the measure of semanticity has been applied to a large corpus of texts written in Catalan. We show that the semanticity of words allows us to classify the word classes existing in Catalan in a simple way so that both the semantic and syntactic capacity of each word within a language can be integrated under this parameter. By means of this semanticity measure, it has been observed that adverbs behave like function words in Catalan. This approach offers a quantitative and objective tool for researchers and linguists to gain insights into the structure and dynamics of languages, contributing to a deeper understanding of their underlying principles. The application of semanticity to Catalan is a promising pilot study, with potential applications in other languages, which will allow progress to be made in the field of theoretical linguistics and contribute to the development of automated linguistic tools.