and initial degenerations. More specifically, we introduce an invariant of a compactification
of such a variety called the 'tropical motivic nearby fiber'. This invariant specializes in the
schön case to the Hodge–Deligne polynomial of the limit mixed Hodge structure of a
corresponding degeneration. We give purely combinatorial expressions for this Hodge–
Deligne polynomial in the cases of schön hypersurfaces and matroidal tropical varieties. We …