# Diachronic Usage Relatedness (DURel): A Framework for the Annotation of Lexical Semantic Change

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.06517 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.06517/

## Key facts

- Cited by 35 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 18 Apr 2018.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 35)

- [Explaining and Improving BERT Performance on Lexical Semantic Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.07259/) (2021)
- [DWUG: A large Resource of Diachronic Word Usage Graphs in Four Languages](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08540/) (2021)
- [A Survey on Contextualised Semantic Shift Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.01666/) (2023)
- [Simple, Interpretable and Stable Method for Detecting Words with Usage Change across Corpora](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.14330/) (2021)
- [A Systematic Comparison of Contextualized Word Embeddings for Lexical Semantic Change](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.12011/) (2024)
- [Challenges for Computational Lexical Semantic Change](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.07668/) (2021)
- [Machine-assisted quantitizing designs: augmenting humanities and social sciences with artificial intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.14379/) (2023)
- [Lexical Semantic Change Discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.03111/) (2021)
- [Three-part diachronic semantic change dataset for Russian](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.08294/) (2021)
- [LSCDiscovery: A shared task on semantic change discovery and detection in Spanish](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.06691/) (2022)
- [Grammatical Profiling for Semantic Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.10397/) (2021)
- [(Chat)GPT v BERT: Dawn of Justice for Semantic Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.14040/) (2024)
- [Using Synchronic Definitions and Semantic Relations to Classify Semantic Change Types](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.03452/) (2024)
- [NorDiaChange: Diachronic Semantic Change Dataset for Norwegian](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05123/) (2022)
- [Do Not Fire the Linguist: Grammatical Profiles Help Language Models Detect Semantic Change](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.05717/) (2022)
- [The DURel Annotation Tool: Human and Computational Measurement of Semantic Proximity, Sense Clusters and Semantic Change](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12664/) (2023)
- [Evolving linguistic divergence on polarizing social media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.01659/) (2023)
- [Towards Automating Text Annotation: A Case Study on Semantic Proximity Annotation using GPT-4](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.04130/) (2024)
- [Evaluating Contextualized Representations of (Spanish) Ambiguous Words: A New Lexical Resource and Empirical Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.14678/) (2024)
- [Lexical semantic change for Ancient Greek and Latin](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.09069/) (2021)
- [Effects of Pre- and Post-Processing on type-based Embeddings in Lexical Semantic Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.09368/) (2021)
- [The LSCD Benchmark: a Testbed for Diachronic Word Meaning Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00176/) (2024)
- [Quantifying Lexical Semantic Shift via Unbalanced Optimal Transport](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.12569/) (2024)
- [Transparent Semantic Change Detection with Dependency-Based Profiles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.02891/) (2026)
- [Computational modeling of semantic change](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06337/) (2023)
- [ReFRAME or Remain: Unsupervised Lexical Semantic Change Detection with Frame Semantics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.04514/) (2026)
- [SuperSim: a test set for word similarity and relatedness in Swedish](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.05228/) (2021)
- [Tracking Semantic Change in Slovene: A Novel Dataset and Optimal Transport-Based Distance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.16596/) (2024)
- [Historical Ink: Semantic Shift Detection for 19th Century Spanish](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12852/) (2024)
- [Evaluating the Evaluator: Problems with SemEval-2020 Task 1 for Lexical Semantic Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.13232/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We propose a framework that extends synchronic polysemy annotation to diachronic changes in lexical meaning, to counteract the lack of resources for evaluating computational models of lexical semantic change. Our framework exploits an intuitive notion of semantic relatedness, and distinguishes between innovative and reductive meaning changes with high inter-annotator agreement. The resulting test set for German comprises ratings from five annotators for the relatedness of 1,320 use pairs across 22 target words.