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Semantic halo of a meter: A keyword-based approach
The semantic halo of a meter (semantičeskij oreol metra) is a notion that was introduced by Mikhail Gasparov to describe semantic invariants of poetic texts composed using the same metrical scheme. Most studies addressing this phenomenon have been based on expert knowledge of the text corpus. In this study, I propose an automated approach to analyzing the semantic halo of various meters based on keyword extraction, using a simple measure of keyness as developed by Adam Kilgarriff. The method is applied to texts from the Poetic subcorpus of the Russian National Corpus. It allows us to discern basic motifs that are very close to those identified by literary scholars, which proves that it is a promising way to analyze the semantic halo of a meter. Some novel associations can also be inferred from the keyword lists. Clearly, keyword extraction cannot replace profound expert knowledge, but it can serve as a useful first step of the analysis.