Exploring semantic differences between the Indonesian prefixesPE-andPEN-using a vector space model
Karlina Denistia, Elnaz Shafaei-Bajestan, R. Harald Baayen · Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory · 2021
Abstract Indonesian has two prefixes,PE-andPEN-, that are similar in form and meaning, but are probably not allomorphs. In this study, we applied a distributional vector space model to clarify whether these prefixes have discriminable semantics. Comparisons of pairs of words within and across morphologically defined sets of words revealed that cosine similarities of pairs consisting of a word withPE-and a word withPEN-were reduced compared to pairs of onlyPE-words, or of onlyPEN-words. Furthermore, nouns withPE-were more similar to their base words than was the case for words withPEN-. The specialized use ofPE-for words denoting agents, and the specialized use ofPEN-for denoting instruments, was also visible in the semantic vector space. These differences in the semantics ofPE-andPEN-thus provide further quantitative support for the independent status ofPE-as opposed toPEN-.