124 Yves Peirsman, Kris Heylen and Dirk Geeraerts
answer this question, we have to turn our attention to the contextual fea-
tures that we used as dimensions of the context vectors. We contrast islam
and christendom in the same way as before, but we now replace the nearest
neighbors by these contextual features. Each feature is assigned a rank on
the basis of its value for the respective target word, again with rank 101 for
all features outside the top 100. Table 3 gives the features with the biggest
difference in log ranks after 9/11.
Table 3. Most highly distinguishing dimensions of islam and christendom after
9/11
This top twenty of features most typical of either islam or christendom
again shows some intriguing patterns. With christendom, it is the religious
islam christendom
cnj/christendom/noun ‘christianity’
mod/politiek/adj ‘political’
mod/radicaal/adj ‘radical’
cnj/moslim/noun ‘muslim’
cnj/Westen/name ‘West’
su/sta/verb ‘stand’
cnj/democratie/noun ‘democracy’
cnj/integratie/noun ‘integration’
mod/fundamentalistisch/adj
‘fundamentalist’
obj1/misbruik/verb ‘abuse’
mod/militant/adj ‘militant’
cnj/cultuur/noun ‘culture’
cnj/terrorisme/noun ‘terrorism’
pc/weet_van/verb ‘know_of’
su/vorm/verb ‘form’
cnj/homoseksualiteit/noun
‘homosexuality’
mod/Nederlands/adj ‘Dutch’
su/verbied/verb ‘forbid’
pmPP/in_Nederland/name
‘in_Holland’
mod/liberaal/adj ‘liberal’cnj/islam/noun ‘islam’
su/heb/verb ‘have’
mod/vroeg/adj ‘early’
cnj/humanisme/noun ‘humanism’
mod/westers/adj ‘western’
cnj/hindoeïsme/noun ‘Hinduism’
cnj/kerk/noun ‘church’
su/ga/verb ‘go’
cnj/god/noun ‘god’
cnj/boeddhisme/noun ‘Buddhism’
su/heers/verb ‘rule’
mod/traditioneel/adj ‘traditional’
cnj/religie/noun ‘religion’
mod/orthodox/adj ‘orthodox’
mod/protestants/adj ‘protestant’
su/maak_door/verb ‘go_through’
pmPP/in_eeuw/noun ‘in_century’
cnj/jodendom/noun ‘Judaism’
pc/ga_over_tot/verb ‘proceed_to’
su/ontsta/verb ‘arise’