{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,8]],"date-time":"2026-05-08T16:37:24Z","timestamp":1778258244009,"version":"3.51.4"},"reference-count":85,"publisher":"MIT Press - Journals","issue":"3","content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Computational Linguistics"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2020,11]]},"abstract":"<jats:p> Multilingual representations have mostly been evaluated based on their performance on specific tasks. In this article, we look beyond engineering goals and analyze the relations between languages in computational representations. We introduce a methodology for comparing languages based on their organization of semantic concepts. We propose to conduct an adapted version of representational similarity analysis of a selected set of concepts in computational multilingual representations. Using this analysis method, we can reconstruct a phylogenetic tree that closely resembles those assumed by linguistic experts. These results indicate that multilingual distributional representations that are only trained on monolingual text and bilingual dictionaries preserve relations between languages without the need for any etymological information. In addition, we propose a measure to identify semantic drift between language families. We perform experiments on word-based and sentence-based multilingual models and provide both quantitative results and qualitative examples. Analyses of semantic drift in multilingual representations can serve two purposes: They can indicate unwanted characteristics of the computational models and they provide a quantitative means to study linguistic phenomena across languages. <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1162\/coli_a_00382","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2020,7,16]],"date-time":"2020-07-16T19:36:46Z","timestamp":1594928206000},"page":"571-603","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":11,"title":["Semantic Drift in Multilingual Representations"],"prefix":"10.1162","volume":"46","author":[{"given":"Lisa","family":"Beinborn","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Computational Lexicology & Terminology Lab."}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Rochelle","family":"Choenni","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Universiteit van Amsterdam, Institute for Logic, Language and                         Computation."}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"281","reference":[{"key":"bib1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.18653\/v1\/W19-4820"},{"key":"bib2","author":"Ammar Waleed","year":"2016","journal-title":"arXiv preprint arXiv:1602.01925"},{"key":"bib3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.18653\/v1\/P17-1042"},{"key":"bib4","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1162\/tacl_a_00288"},{"key":"bib5","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.18653\/v1\/W16-1208"},{"key":"bib6","volume-title":"3rd International Conference on Learning Representations, ICLR 2015","author":"Bahdanau Dzmitry","year":"2015"},{"key":"bib7","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/TPAMI.2018.2798607"},{"key":"bib8","unstructured":"Beinborn,\n                                Lisa.                         2016. Predicting and Manipulating the Difficulty of                         Text-Completion Exercises for Language Learning. Ph.D.                         thesis, Technische Universit\u00e4t                         Darmstadt,                     Nagoya."},{"key":"bib9","first-page":"2325","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Computational Linguistics","author":"Beinborn Lisa","year":"2018"},{"key":"bib10","first-page":"883","volume-title":"Proceedings of the Sixth International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing","author":"Beinborn Lisa","year":"2013"},{"key":"bib11","first-page":"1764","volume-title":"International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence","author":"Bergsma Shane","year":"2011"},{"key":"bib12","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1162\/coli_a_00351"},{"key":"bib13","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1162\/tacl_a_00051"},{"key":"bib14","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.18653\/v1\/S17-2001"},{"key":"bib15","volume-title":"International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR)","author":"Conneau Alexis","year":"2017"},{"key":"bib16","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.18653\/v1\/D18-1269"},{"key":"bib17","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1515\/9783110305258.57"},{"key":"bib18","unstructured":"Dellert,\n                                Johannes, and                                 Gerhard J\u00e4ger.                         2017. Northeuralex (version                     0.9). T\u00fcbingen:                         Eberhard-Karls University                     T\u00fcbingen."},{"key":"bib19","first-page":"4171","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 2019 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies, Volume 1 (Long and Short Papers)","author":"Devlin Jacob","year":"2019"},{"key":"bib20","author":"Dinu Georgiana","year":"2014","journal-title":"International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), Workshop Track"},{"key":"bib21","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.18653\/v1\/D18-1062"},{"key":"bib22","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.18653\/v1\/K15-1012"},{"key":"bib23","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.18653\/v1\/E17-1084"},{"key":"bib24","first-page":"3507","volume-title":"Proceedings of COLING 2016, the 26th International Conference on Computational Linguistics: Technical Papers","author":"Eger Steffen","year":"2016"},{"key":"bib25","first-page":"8","volume-title":"Proceedings of the LREC 2018 MLP-MomenT Workshop","author":"Espa\u00f1a-Bonet Cristina","year":"2018"},{"key":"bib26","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.3115\/v1\/E14-1049"},{"key":"bib27","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/503104.503110"},{"key":"bib28","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1162\/tacl_a_00081"},{"key":"bib29","first-page":"414","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics and 17th International Conference on Computational Linguistics-Volume 1","author":"Fung Pascale","year":"1998"},{"key":"bib30","volume-title":"Die Ausbreitung des Indogermanischen: Thesen aus Sprachwissenschaft, Arch\u00e4ologie und Genetik","author":"Geisler Hans","year":"2010"},{"key":"bib31","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.18653\/v1\/D16-1235"},{"key":"bib32","volume-title":"Interlingua Grammar","author":"Gode Alexander","year":"1951"},{"key":"bib33","first-page":"748","volume-title":"International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML)","author":"Gouws Stephan","year":"2015"},{"key":"bib34","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.3115\/v1\/N15-1157"},{"key":"bib35","first-page":"3483","volume-title":"Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-2018)","author":"Grave Edouard","year":"2018"},{"key":"bib36","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.18653\/v1\/D16-1229"},{"key":"bib37","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.18653\/v1\/D16-1229"},{"key":"bib39","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.18653\/v1\/E17-2098"},{"key":"bib40","first-page":"1459","volume-title":"Proceedings of COLING 2012","author":"Klementiev Alexandre","year":"2012"},{"key":"bib41","first-page":"79","volume-title":"MT Summit","volume":"5","author":"Koehn Philipp","year":"2005"},{"key":"bib42","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.3389\/neuro.01.016.2008"},{"key":"bib43","first-page":"1384","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Computational Linguistics","author":"Kutuzov Andrey","year":"2018"},{"key":"bib44","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.3115\/v1\/P15-1027"},{"key":"bib45","first-page":"765","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 15th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Volume 1, Long Papers","volume":"1","author":"Levy Omer","year":"2017"},{"key":"bib46","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.3758\/s13428-018-1177-6"},{"key":"bib47","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.3115\/v1\/W15-1521"},{"key":"bib48","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.4018\/978-1-4666-0188-8.ch006"},{"key":"bib49","author":"Mikolov Tomas","year":"2013","journal-title":"arXiv preprint arXiv:1309.4168"},{"key":"bib50","first-page":"3111","volume-title":"Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems","author":"Mikolov Tomas","year":"2013"},{"key":"bib51","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1111\/j.1755-2567.1970.tb00434.x"},{"key":"bib52","first-page":"216","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics","author":"Navigli Roberto","year":"2010"},{"key":"bib53","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.18653\/v1\/W16-1905"},{"key":"bib54","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.3115\/v1\/D14-1162"},{"key":"bib55","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1038\/s41467-018-03068-4"},{"key":"bib56","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.18653\/v1\/N18-1202"},{"key":"bib57","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.18653\/v1\/P17-1049"},{"key":"bib58","first-page":"6076","volume-title":"Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems","author":"Raghu Maithra","year":"2017"},{"key":"bib59","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1093\/comjnl\/1.3.144"},{"key":"bib60","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1111\/1467-968X.00091"},{"key":"bib61","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.18653\/v1\/N18-1044"},{"key":"bib62","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/5.880083"},{"key":"bib63","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1613\/jair.1.11640"},{"key":"bib64","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/BF02289451"},{"key":"bib65","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.18653\/v1\/P18-2037"},{"key":"bib66","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.18653\/v1\/W17-2619"},{"key":"bib67","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.18653\/v1\/P16-1162"},{"key":"bib68","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1209\/0295-5075\/81\/68005"},{"key":"bib69","volume-title":"International Conference on Learning Representations","author":"Smith Samuel L.","year":"2017"},{"key":"bib70","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.18653\/v1\/W16-2521"},{"key":"bib71","first-page":"125","author":"Starostin George","year":"2013","journal-title":"Classification and Evolution in Biology, Linguistics and the History of Science"},{"key":"bib72","first-page":"3104","volume-title":"Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems","author":"Sutskever Ilya","year":"2014"},{"key":"bib73","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1086\/464321"},{"key":"bib74","author":"Tahmasebi N.","year":"2018","journal-title":"arXiv preprint arXiv:1811.06278v1"},{"key":"bib75","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1177\/107769905303000401"},{"key":"bib76","first-page":"2254","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2018)","author":"Thompson Bill","year":"2018"},{"key":"bib77","first-page":"2214","volume-title":"Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-2012)","author":"Tiedemann J\u00f6rg","year":"2012"},{"key":"bib78","first-page":"5998","volume-title":"Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 30","author":"Vaswani Ashish","year":"2017"},{"key":"bib79","first-page":"188","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 54th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics","author":"Vuli\u0107 Ivan","year":"2016"},{"key":"bib80","first-page":"247","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 54th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics","volume":"1","author":"Vuli\u0107 Ivan","year":"2016"},{"key":"bib81","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.18653\/v1\/W18-5446"},{"key":"bib82","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1080\/01621459.1963.10500845"},{"key":"bib84","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/0169-7439(87)80084-9"},{"key":"bib85","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1073\/pnas.1520752113"},{"key":"bib86","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.18653\/v1\/P17-1179"},{"key":"bib87","first-page":"1393","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 2013 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing","author":"Zou Will Y.","year":"2013"}],"container-title":["Computational Linguistics"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mitpressjournals.org\/doi\/pdf\/10.1162\/coli_a_00382","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2021,3,12]],"date-time":"2021-03-12T21:28:35Z","timestamp":1615584515000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/direct.mit.edu\/coli\/article\/46\/3\/571-603\/93376"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2020,11]]},"references-count":85,"journal-issue":{"issue":"3","published-print":{"date-parts":[[2020,11]]}},"alternative-id":["10.1162\/coli_a_00382"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1162\/coli_a_00382","relation":{},"ISSN":["0891-2017","1530-9312"],"issn-type":[{"value":"0891-2017","type":"print"},{"value":"1530-9312","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2020,11]]}}}