Digital Classicist London 2019: Exploring the productivity of Homeric formulae
Channel: Digital Classicist London Seminars
Date: 2019-06-14

Institute of Classical Studies
Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU
Friday June 14, 2019 at 16:30 in room G34
 
Martina Astrid Rodda & Barbara McGillivray (Alan Turing Institute)

Exploring the Productivity of Homeric Formulae through Distributional Semantics

The language of archaic Greek epic is overwhelmingly composed of formulae, i.e. repeated, rigid linguistic structures. Formulae do show some limited variation in their form; however, describing the boundaries and the mechanisms driving formulaic variation is notably difficult. Computational methods on large-scale digital collections can shed new light onto this problem. We present the first computational model which uses Distributional Semantics to assess how meaning variation drives formulaic productivity in ancient Greek epic. By comparing the distribution of meanings in archaic vs. later poetry, we can detect trends of development in formulaic usage through time and investigate their causes.

Full programme: http://digitalclassicist.org/wip/wip2019.html

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