scholarly journals The Detective and Sensation Fiction of Wilkie Collins: A Computational Lexical-Semantic Analysis

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdulfattah Omar
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdulfattah Omar

Theme and genre classifications in the works of Wilkie Collins (1824-89) have been extensively investigated using different literary approaches; these are usually based on textual content and biographical considerations. Different critics place Collins’ works under the two main headings of detective fiction and sensation fiction. Such analyses have been generated by what is referred to as the ‘philological method’; that is, by an individual critic’s reading of the relevant material and their intuitive abstraction of generalizations from that reading. A problem with such an approach is that it is not objective, and it is therefore unreliable. The research question is thus asked in response to the subjectivity of previous genre classifications of the novels of Wilkie Collins and the lack of agreement among literary critics and researchers about such classifications. As such, I ask whether an objective and conceptually useful reading of the themes and subjects of Wilkie Collins’ prose fiction texts can be developed. As thus, computational lexical-semantics is suggested to understand the issues of thematic classification. For this purpose, vector space clustering (VSC) was used for capturing the lexical-semantic features of his novels and linking them explicitly to the relevant themes and genres. It is suggested that through this method, an objective, replicable, and reliable genre classification of Collins’ novels is possible. The results of this study can serve as a basis for future studies and criticisms of Wilkie Collins’ fiction.


2000 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 622-634 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matti Laine ◽  
Riitta Salmelin ◽  
Päivi Helenius ◽  
Reijo Marttila

Magnetoencephalographic (MEG) changes in cortical activity were studied in a chronic Finnish-speaking deep dyslexic patient during single-word and sentence reading. It has been hypothesized that in deep dyslexia, written word recognition and its lexical-semantic analysis are subserved by the intact right hemisphere. However, in our patient, as well as in most nonimpaired readers, lexical-semantic processing as measured by sentence-final semantic-incongruency detection was related to the left superior-temporal cortex activation. Activations around this same cortical area could be identified in single-word reading as well. Another factor relevant to deep dyslexic reading, the morphological complexity of the presented words, was also studied. The effect of morphology was observed only during the preparation for oral output. By performing repeated recordings 1 year apart, we were able to document significant variability in both the spontaneous activity and the evoked responses in the lesioned left hemisphere even though at the behavioural level, the patient's performance was stable. The observed variability emphasizes the importance of estimating consistency of brain activity both within and between measurements in brain-damaged individuals.


10.29007/vmrh ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryo Tsutahara

This paper shows the semantic differences and similarities between Spanish active deverbal adjectives with the -dor and -nte suffixes. Minimal pairs of derivatives with the suffixes will be quantitatively analyzed, as the patterns of modification are the center of the interest. This study concludes that the derivatives’ modification patterns are parallel with the denotation patterns of nominal derivatives with the same suffixes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (103) ◽  
pp. 54-65
Author(s):  
JELENA LEPOJEVIC

This paper considers, from the point of view of modern theory of language in contact, words loaned from the Russian language or through the Russian language that are still in active use in the modern Serbian language. The aim of this paper is to determine the corpus of these elements in the dictionaries of the modern Serbian literary language, as well as to conduct a morphological and lexical-semantic analysis of the collected material. Many of these words are not perceived as borrowings by speakers of the Serbian language, but it is a fact that these elements came to the Serbian language from Russian. The author studies the words with the label rus. , identified by the analysis of Serbian language dictionaries. Words of Russian origin that are on the periphery of the lexical fund of the Serbian language, such as archaisms and historicisms, have not been taken into consideration.


2009 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 323-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Knight

Over the last thirty years or so, sensation fiction has shaken off its scandalous roots to become a respectable area of academic study. The transformation began with the publication of Winifred Hughes's The Maniac in the Cellar (1980) and Patrick Brantlinger's “What Is ‘Sensational’ about the ‘Sensation Novel’?” (1982), and gathered pace in the 1980s and 90s through the contributions of Ann Cvetkovich, Pamela Gilbert, D. A. Miller, Lyn Pykett, and Jenny Bourne Taylor. One of the results of all this scholarly interest is that the genre has begun to attract more introductory works that concentrate on consolidating what others have said. Ideas that were once considered new or controversial are now seen as common knowledge: we know that sensation fiction involves more than the influential novels written in the 1860s by Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Wilkie Collins; we are familiar with the frequent blurring between sensation fiction and other genres (including crime fiction and the gothic); we are well schooled in interdisciplinary approaches that read sensation fiction alongside science, psychology, and law; and we are used to competing claims for sensation fiction as a subversive or conservative genre. With so much attention being given to a collection of writings once described by Hughes as “irretrievably minor” (167) and by Brantlinger as “a minor subgenre of British fiction” (1), one could be forgiven for thinking that there are few secrets left to be uncovered. Yet, as the wide array of books considered here attests, the critical appeal of sensation fiction and Victorian crime shows no sign of abating. If anything, the first few years of the twenty-first century have seen even greater levels of interest: a number of Victorian Studies conferences have chosen sensation as their theme, and the genre features regularly in the pages of academic journals. Given that the extent of our ongoing fascination would probably have shocked a previous generation of scholars, this review of recent critical trends will try and figure out why the genre possesses such a powerful hold on our thinking and whether or not this hold is likely to continue.


Litera ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 51-62
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Andreevna Fomicheva

Based on the compositions of pre-courteous epic poetry and chivalric romance written in the Middle High German language, this article reviews the problem of lexical polysemy in relation to the phenomena of homonymy and synonymy, as well as the problem of structural description of lexis. The need for comprehensive examination of polysemous lexemes in the Middle High German language, which includes structural analysis of the meaning of polysemous word and the lexical-thematic group and/or synonymic row it belongs to, well as the study of contextual implementation of the meanings of polysemous word, is substantiated by the principle of diffusivity of meanings of polysemous word that complicates comprising dictionary definitions and creates difficulties for the researcher in distinguishing the meanings of a polysemous word and separating polysemy from homonymy. Based on the example of lexical-thematic group for denomination of edged weapon in the Middle High German Language, the author demonstrates the appropriateness of using lexical-semantic analysis for establishing systemic relations between the analyzed lexemes, as well as postulates the importance of the context in determination of the structure of polysemous word. Discussion of the given examples from the compositions of pre-courteous epic poetry and chivalric romance written in the Middle High German language is accompanied by the author’s clarifications to the dictionary definitions of the lexemes under review. The conclusion is made on feasibility of the authorial approach towards detection of the discrepancies between lexicographic data and use of the lexeme in the texts written in the Middle High German language. The author also believes that this research is valuable from the perspective of lexicographic practice.


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