Pierluigi Cassotti, Naomi Baes, Stefano De Pascale, Jáder Martins Camboim de Sá, Francesco Periti, Nick Haslam, Dirk Geeraerts, Nina Tahmasebi. Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers). 2026.

Shamsuddeen Hassan Muhammad, Nedjma Ousidhoum, Idris Abdulmumin, Jan Philip Wahle, Terry Ruas, Meriem Beloucif, Christine de Kock, Nirmal Surange, Daniela Teodorescu, Ibrahim Said Ahmad, David Ifeoluwa Adelani, Alham Fikri Aji, Felermino D. M. A. Ali, Ilseyar Alimova, Vladimir Araujo, Nikolay Babakov, Naomi Baes, Ana-Maria Bucur, Andiswa Bukula, Guanqun Cao, Rodrigo Tufiño, Rendi Chevi, Chiamaka Ijeoma Chukwuneke, Alexandra Ciobotaru, Daryna Dementieva, Murja Sani Gadanya, Robert Geislinger, Bela Gipp, Oumaima Hourrane, Oana Ignat, Falalu Ibrahim Lawan, Rooweither Mabuya, Rahmad Mahendra, Vukosi Marivate, Alexander Panchenko, Andrew Piper, Charles Henrique Porto Ferreira, Vitaly Protasov, Samuel Rutunda, Manish Shrivastava, Aura Cristina Udrea, Lilian Diana Awuor Wanzare, Sophie Wu, Florian Valentin Wunderlich, Hanif Muhammad Zhafran, Tianhui Zhang, Yi Zhou, Saif M. Mohammad. Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers). 2025.

Historical linguists have identified multiple forms of lexical semantic change.We present a three-dimensional framework for integrating these forms and a unified computational methodology for evaluating them concurrently.The dimensions represent increases or decreases in semantic 1) sentiment (valence of a target word's collocates), 2) breadth (diversity of contexts in which the target word appears), and 3) intensity (emotional arousal of collocates or the frequency of intensifiers).These dimensions can be complemented by the evaluation of shifts in the frequency of the target words and the thematic content of its collocates.This framework enables lexical semantic change to be mapped economically and systematically and has applications in computational social science.We present an illustrative analysis of semantic shifts in mental health and mental illness in two corpora, demonstrating patterns of semantic change that illuminate contemporary concerns about pathologization, stigma, and concept creep.