Exploring the Structure of AI-Induced Language Change in Scientific English

TL;DR

This study investigates recent rapid changes in scientific English, especially around 2022, attributing them mainly to semantic and pragmatic shifts driven by Large Language Models like ChatGPT, rather than simple lexical replacements.

Contribution

It provides a systematic analysis of semantic clusters and grammatical shifts in scientific language, revealing that language changes are primarily semantic and pragmatic, not just lexical.

Findings

Semantic clusters tend to shift together with increased usage.

Adjective 'important' shows a significant decline in usage.

Language changes involve broader semantic and pragmatic modifications, not just word replacements.

Abstract

Scientific English has undergone rapid and unprecedented changes in recent years, with words such as "delve," "intricate," and "crucial" showing significant spikes in frequency since around 2022. These changes are widely attributed to the growing influence of Large Language Models like ChatGPT in the discourse surrounding bias and misalignment. However, apart from changes in frequency, the exact structure of these linguistic shifts has remained unclear. The present study addresses this and investigates whether these changes involve the replacement of synonyms by suddenly 'spiking words,' for example, "crucial" replacing "essential" and "key," or whether they reflect broader semantic and pragmatic qualifications. To further investigate structural changes, we include part of speech tagging in our analysis to quantify linguistic shifts over grammatical categories and differentiate between word forms, like "potential" as a noun vs. as an adjective. We systematically analyze synonym groups for widely discussed 'spiking words' based on frequency trends in scientific abstracts from PubMed. We find that entire semantic clusters often shift together, with most or all words in a group increasing in usage. This pattern suggests that changes induced by Large Language Models are primarily semantic and pragmatic rather than purely lexical. Notably, the adjective "important" shows a significant decline, which prompted us to systematically analyze decreasing lexical items. Our analysis of "collapsing" words reveals a more complex picture, which is consistent with organic language change and contrasts with the patterns of the abrupt spikes. These insights into the structure of language change contribute to our understanding of how language technology continues to shape human language.