Derivation and meaning: a computer-assisted investigation into etymological and semantic connections in English

Abstract

An important subfield within philology is etymology, the study of words and their origins. This thesis combines philology and etymology with computational techniques to quantify the large-scale relationships between words in the English language. Specifically, using English headwords, definitions, and etymology data from Wiktionary, graphs were constructed of English words and their relationships in etymology and meaning. These graphs were then examined to test for any correlation between etymological and semantic associations in the graphs. No clear correlation was found, meaning relationships in etymology are not a reliable guide to relationships in meaning in the English language.