ePrints

Cluster analysis of the Newcastle Electronic Corpus of Tyneside English: A comparison of methods

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Hermann Moisl, Vikki Jones

Downloads

• Accepted version [.pdf]

Abstract

This article examines the feasibility of an empirical approach to sociolinguistic analysis of the Newcastle Electronic Corpus of Tyneside English using exploratory multivariate methods. It addresses a known problem with one class of such methods, hierarchical cluster analysis - that different clustering algorithms can yield different analyses of the same data set, and that there is no obvious way of selecting the best one. The proposed solution is to analyze the data using hierarchical methods in conjunction with one or more fundamentally different types of clustering method, and then to select the analysis on which the hierarchical and the other method(s) agree most closely. A dimensionality reduction method, the self-organizing map (SOM), is used to exemplify this approach. The result is a close though not perfect match between the SOM and complete-link hierarchical analyses, but there is an important reservation - the SOM results vary with changes in user-defined training parameters, and are consequently also open to the criticism of inconsistency. The SOM cannot therefore be an objective arbiter for hierarchical clustering, but the analysis on which they agree gives a better basis for understanding the structure of the data than either method can provide on its own. © The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of ALLC and ACH. All rights reserved.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Moisl HL, Jones VM

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Literary and Linguistics Computing

Year: 2005

Volume: 20

Issue: 1

Pages: 125-146

Date deposited: 16/07/2010

ISSN (print): 0268-1145

ISSN (electronic): 1477-4615

Publisher: Oxford University Press

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqi026

DOI: 10.1093/llc/fqi026

Altmetrics

Share