Urban Transportation in Latvian Novels or Why do you use a 19th-century horse-drawn cab when you have a 20th-century taxi?

The article explores the depiction of urban transportation in Latvian novels from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century, aiming to understand how these images reflect broader societal modernization and technological and social changes in an increasingly urbanized environment. The first part of the study explores the frequency and dissemination of mentions of urban vehicles in the novels. Two methods were used to identify relevant transport terms — Word2Vec and the Gemini 1.5 language model, comparing the results of both approaches. In the second part of the study, particular attention is given to the horse-drawn cab and the taxi, which illustrate economic development, societal modernization, and the growing disparity between different social strata. The study emphasizes that transportation is a practical means of mobility and a significant cultural and social symbol. The study uses the data set Corpus of Latvian Early Novels, which includes novels published between 1879 and 1940.