用AI分析科幻小说如何打破人、动物、机器的语义边界。
Estranged Predictions: Measuring Semantic Category Disruption with Masked Language Modelling
- 用掩码语言模型生成词汇替代,量化语义边界稳定性。
- 科幻小说中机器词跨类别替换率显著更高,人词则更稳定。
- 揭示科幻通过可控语义扰动重构人类中心逻辑,适合文学与语言研究者。
本文通过掩码语言模型(MLM)考察科幻小说如何颠覆人、动物与机器的本体论范畴。基于科幻小说(Gollancz SF Masterworks)和普通小说(NovelTM)语料库,采用RoBERTa生成被掩码词的词汇替代,并用Gemini分类,以保留率、替换率与熵值三个指标量化概念渗透性。结果显示,科幻小说表现出更强的概念渗透性,尤其在机器相关术语中出现显著的跨类别替换与分散现象;而人类术语则保持较强的语义一致性,并常作为替代层级的锚点。这表明科幻中的异化效应是一种受控的语义规范扰动,可通过概率建模检测。研究为计算文学研究提供了新方法,揭示了科幻的语言基础结构。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
This paper examines how science fiction destabilises ontological categories by measuring conceptual permeability across the terms human, animal, and machine using masked language modelling (MLM). Drawing on corpora of science fiction (Gollancz SF Masterworks) and general fiction (NovelTM), we operationalise Darko Suvin's theory of estrangement as computationally measurable deviation in token prediction, using RoBERTa to generate lexical substitutes for masked referents and classifying them via Gemini. We quantify conceptual slippage through three metrics: retention rate, replacement rate, and entropy, mapping the stability or disruption of category boundaries across genres. Our findings reveal that science fiction exhibits heightened conceptual permeability, particularly around machine referents, which show significant cross-category substitution and dispersion. Human terms, by contrast, maintain semantic coherence and often anchor substitutional hierarchies. These patterns suggest a genre-specific restructuring within anthropocentric logics. We argue that estrangement in science fiction operates as a controlled perturbation of semantic norms, detectable through probabilistic modelling, and that MLMs, when used critically, serve as interpretive instruments capable of surfacing genre-conditioned ontological assumptions. This study contributes to the methodological repertoire of computational literary studies and offers new insights into the linguistic infrastructure of science fiction.
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