This thesis builds on the idea that subtle, culturally induced differences in semantic meaning remain between translation equivalent words across different languages. This study further argues that...Show moreThis thesis builds on the idea that subtle, culturally induced differences in semantic meaning remain between translation equivalent words across different languages. This study further argues that these differences in meaning may be approached through the examination of the linguistic contexts within which these words occur. Consequently, this work provides a quantitative methodology for highlighting relevant areas in which such cultural differences may be reflected. The method is based on intuition derived from several existing, structuralist methods and works primarily by comparing the frequency of hypernyms of nouns that appear in the neighborhood of an examined word. This thesis focuses on the indigenous Dolgan language as a case study; one that is purposely exploratory in nature. This minority language poses the research with the additional challenge of working with a small-sized language corpus for computational purposes: it demands a ‘rough’ look at data to act as a means, instead of being a limitation. Overall, the results indicate that culturally determined differences between words exist to a measurable degree, despite the unavailability of an adequately sized dataset. Although the results provide insufficient guidance for drawing anthropological conclusions, the findings reassert that cultural knowledge is encoded within language and reiterate the need to preserve endangered indigenous languages.Show less
