Machine-Readable Dictionaries

Challenges for Lexicography in NLP

LSA Summer 2011University of ColoradoBoulderOrin Hargraves

Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD) and Machine-readable Dictionaries (MRDs)

WSD is essential for processing polysemous words in NLP

then stacks them up in a neat pile.Recall the reader who dawned his wifes pantylivestock farm in western Illinois. I can recall several Christmases when we were firstling, traceability of the food content and recall systems to be of a very high standard he changes introduced may be impossible to recall.Personally, genetic modificatiocontamination" is probably what caused the recall of the taco shells a few months ago. It for its retro plot and visual style that recall the Val Lewton films of the 1940s, itscourses, then this article will hopefully recall the prominence of the original texts.he toes he got ain't too pretty. I seem to recall a bar fight in Houston. I was in Houster candidates for Governor in Californias recall election. So are an additional 132 peoafter one airing of Schwarzeneggers Total Recall, which runs 113 minutes, could requiretitutionally ban same-sex marriage. Recall, also, that the Canadian court could nroved corn into the food system.The recall of the StarLink corn is wreaking havocMachine WSD requires access to a sense inventory for any polysemous word or homographic form

Dictionary databases provide a comprehensive sense inventory (ideally for all words and forms)

Owners of dictionary databases are eager for the income stream that MRDs may offer, in a time of dwindling returns from print dictionaries.

Machine WSD rarely does better than about 60% accuracy

Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD) and Machine-readable Dictionaries (MRDs)

WSD is essential for processing polysemous words in NLP

then stacks them up in a neat pile.Recall the reader who dawned his wifes pantylivestock farm in western Illinois. I can recall several Christmases when we were firstling, traceability of the food content and recall systems to be of a very high standard he changes introduced may be impossible to recall.Personally, genetic modificatiocontamination" is probably what caused the recall of the taco shells a few months ago. It for its retro plot and visual style that recall the Val Lewton films of the 1940s, itscourses, then this article will hopefully recall the prominence of the original texts.he toes he got ain't too pretty. I seem to recall a bar fight in Houston. I was in Houster candidates for Governor in Californias recall election. So are an additional 132 peoafter one airing of Schwarzeneggers Total Recall, which runs 113 minutes, could requiretitutionally ban same-sex marriage. Recall, also, that the Canadian court could nroved corn into the food system.The recall of the StarLink corn is wreaking havocMachine WSD requires access to a sense inventory for any polysemous word or homographic form

Dictionary databases provide a comprehensive sense inventory (ideally for all words and forms)

Owners of dictionary databases are eager for the income stream that MRDs may offer, in a time of dwindling returns from print dictionaries.

Machine WSD rarely does better than about 60% accuracy

Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD) and Machine-readable Dictionaries (MRDs)

WSD is essential for processing polysemous words in NLP

then stacks them up in a neat pile.Recall the reader who dawned his wifes pantylivestock farm in western Illinois. I can recall several Christmases when we were firstling, traceability of the food content and recall systems to be of a very high standard he changes introduced may be impossible to recall.Personally, genetic modificatiocontamination" is probably what caused the recall of the taco shells a few months ago. It for its retro plot and visual style that recall the Val Lewton films of the 1940s, itscourses, then this article will hopefully recall the prominence of the original texts.he toes he got ain't too pretty. I seem to recall a bar fight in Houston. I was in Houster candidates for Governor in Californias recall election. So are an additional 132 peoafter one airing of Schwarzeneggers Total Recall, which runs 113 minutes, could requiretitutionally ban same-sex marriage. Recall, also, that the Canadian court could nroved corn into the food system.The recall of the StarLink corn is wreaking havocMachine WSD requires access to a sense inventory for any polysemous word or homographic form

Dictionary databases provide a comprehensive sense inventory (ideally for all words and forms)

Owners of dictionary databases are eager for the income stream that MRDs may offer, in a time of dwindling returns from print dictionaries.

Machine WSD rarely does better than about 60% accuracy

Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD) and Machine-readable Dictionaries (MRDs)

WSD is essential for processing polysemous words in NLP

then stacks them up in a neat pile.Recall the reader who dawned his wifes pantylivestock farm in western Illinois. I can recall several Christmases when we were firstling, traceability of the food content and recall systems to be of a very high standard he changes introduced may be impossible to recall.Personally, genetic modificatiocontamination" is probably what caused the recall of the taco shells a few months ago. It for its retro plot and visual style that recall the Val Lewton films of the 1940s, itscourses, then this article will hopefully recall the prominence of the original texts.he toes he got ain't too pretty. I seem to recall a bar fight in Houston. I was in Houster candidates for Governor in Californias recall election. So are an additional 132 peoafter one airing of Schwarzeneggers Total Recall, which runs 113 minutes, could requiretitutionally ban same-sex marriage. Recall, also, that the Canadian court could nroved corn into the food system.The recall of the StarLink corn is wreaking havocMachine WSD requires access to a sense inventory for any polysemous word or homographic form

Dictionary databases provide a comprehensive sense inventory (ideally for all words and forms)

Owners of dictionary databases are eager for the income stream that MRDs may offer, in a time of dwindling returns from print dictionaries.

Machine WSD rarely does better than about 60% accuracy

Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD) and Machine-readable Dictionaries (MRDs)

WSD is essential for processing polysemous words in NLP

then stacks them up in a neat pile.Recall the reader who dawned his wifes pantylivestock farm in western Illinois. I can recall several Christmases when we were firstling, traceability of the food content and recall systems to be of a very high standard he changes introduced may be impossible to recall.Personally, genetic modificatiocontamination" is probably what caused the recall of the taco shells a few months ago. It for its retro plot and visual style that recall the Val Lewton films of the 1940s, itscourses, then this article will hopefully recall the prominence of the original texts.he toes he got ain't too pretty. I seem to recall a bar fight in Houston. I was in Houster candidates for Governor in Californias recall election. So are an additional 132 peoafter one airing of Schwarzeneggers Total Recall, which runs 113 minutes, could requiretitutionally ban same-sex marriage. Recall, also, that the Canadian court could nroved corn into the food system.The recall of the StarLink corn is wreaking havocMachine WSD requires access to a sense inventory for any polysemous word or homographic form

Dictionary databases provide a comprehensive sense inventory (ideally for all words and forms)

Owners of dictionary databases are eager for the income stream that MRDs may offer, in a time of dwindling returns from print dictionaries.

Machine WSD rarely does better than about 60% accuracy

Where do MRDs come from?

Most are secondary products from dictionaries intended for human users, in which . . .

Pertinent entry elements are tagged, and software is developed for access via human or machine query

No standard protocols exist for conversion of dictionary databases to MRDs

WordNet(s) are unique in being purpose built MRDs though they contain mainly human-friendly, conventional definitions

MRDs: For and Against

Thousands of hours of work are already done

Lexicographer input constitutes expert WSD

Dictionary databases may contain not only definitions but features useful for WSD like collocations, idioms, spelling variants, inflections and synonymies

Ready-made sense inventory

Some MRDs are free!

There is wide disparity in sense division among dictionaries

Even single dictionaries show little ontological consistency

Nearly all dictionaries display circularity among some word families and synsets

Sense inventories do not reflect actual usage

Definitions assume human knowledge

Disparities in sense inventories (bug n)

RHUDMW11NOAD

1. Also called true bug, hemipteran, hemipteron. a hemipterous insect.2. (loosely) any insect or insectlike invertebrate.3. Informal. any microorganism, esp. a virus: He was laid up for a week by an intestinalbug.4. Informal. a defect or imperfection, as in a mechanical device, computer program, orplan; glitch: The test flight discovered the bugs in the new plane.5. Informal. a. a person who has a great enthusiasm for something; fan or hobbyist: a hi-fi bug.b. a craze or obsession: He's got the sports-car bug.6. Informal. a. a hidden microphone or other electronic eavesdropping device.7. Horse Racing. the five-pound weight allowance that can be claimed by an apprenticejockey.(etc.)1 a : an insect or other creeping or crawling invertebrate (as a spider orcentipede) b : any of several insects (as the bedbug or cockroach)commonly considered obnoxious c : any of an order (Hemiptera andespecially its suborder Heteroptera) of insects that have suckingmouthparts, forewings thickened at the base, and incompletemetamorphosis and are often economic pests called also true bug2 : an unexpected defect, fault, flaw, or imperfection 3 a : a germ or microorganism especially when causing disease b : an unspecified or nonspecific sickness usually presumed due to a bug4 : a sudden enthusiasm5 : ENTHUSIAST 6 : a prominent person7 : a crazy person8 : a concealed listening device9 : a weightallowance given apprentice jockeys

1 a small insect. informal a harmful microorganism, as a bacterium or virus. an illness caused by such a microorganism: suffering from a flu bug [with adjective] figurativ,e informal an enthusiastic, almost obsessive, interest in something: they caught the sailing bug | Joe was bitten by the showbiz bug.

2 (also true bug) Entomolgy an insect of a large order distinguished by having mouthparts that are modified for piercing and sucking. Order Hemiptera: see HEMIPTERA.

3 a miniature microphone, typically concealed in a room or telephone, used for surveillance.

4 an error m a computer program or system.

Lack of Ontological Consistency

Lack of Ontological Consistency

chamberpot

bedpan

Lack of Ontological Consistency

Circularity (here, in generic terms)

Sense Inventories Don't Reflect Usage

" Yes. The stare. The laser look the jut-jawed coach shoots any UT miscreant who plays lackadaisically or stupidly. " I never really get past the eyes,

advice to all of those doubting academic highbrows out there. To quote that animated miscreant Bart Simpson, " Don't have a cow, man! " This actually

merely of wayfarers but of entire intellectual traditions. # The name of this huge miscreant is Critical Thinking - a name uttered by professors and students with more awe than

, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada # A: American Express is not the only miscreant here. We have received several letters just like yours about credit-card companies. In

ARS Western Regional Research Center in Albany, California. Conquering Caulerpa -- A Marine Miscreant # Sometimes referred to as " killer algae, " C. taxifolia flourishes in warm

China's state-directed economy without a fully convertible currency while lambasting Japan as an economic miscreant. This downgrading of U.S.-Japan ties is particularly painful because it violates the highest virtue

proliferating cells. It turns out that, in at least some cases, a miscreant protein traps p53, explains Princeton's Levine. P53 can't get anywhere near

threat to the notions of causality which underlie our understanding of the universe. The miscreant tachyon velocities, Paul Birch proposed in 1984, may be ruled out by some

the need for Western aid. # Incidentally, " The Ukraine " is a miscreant phrase from the days of the Czarist Empire. Ukraine is a recognized independent nation

, " Martin wrote later, " which is a pit stop for the average miscreant. But when we passed his office, I realized that I wasn't average

Human Knowledge Required!

bedpan a necessary utensil for the use of persons confined to bed (Century)

clipping something cut out or trimmed off, esp. an article from a newspaper (CED)

draw vt extract (an object or liquid) from a container or receptacle (NOAD)

hide to put someone or something in a place where they cannot be seen or found, or to put yourself somewhere where you cannot be seen or found (CDAE)

mangle to spoil, injure, or make incoherent especially through ineptitude (MW11)

restaurant a building where people go to eat (WordNet)

spade 2. some implement, piece, or part resembling this (RHUD)

drop 5b. mention in passing, typically in order to impress (ODE)bombshell 1. an unexpected and surprising event, especially an unpleasant one (ODE)

A Core Problem:
Lumping and Splitting

Humans split lumpiness automatically (by discarding nonsense and impertinent information)

Computers are largely clueless as to what is nonsense, and where logic limits lumpiness

Splitty, very specific definitions are easier for machines to identify, however . . .

They're irritating to humans, and take up much more space (and processing time)

An alternative to MRDs: WMDs MWDs

Machine-Written DictionariesMRD entries can be supplemented with machine-harvested, machine-readable data

Human-friendly lumpiness can be mitigated with the addition of disambiguating features

Other inputs can support human knowledge and flesh out the implicit parts of definitions

Corpus data can identify sense inventory gaps

Many gold standard inputs are readily available and underexploited

Just the Word: collocational data

Just the Word

URL: www.just-the-word.com

Data Owner: Sharp Laboratories

Underlying Data: British National Corpus

Main purpose: catalog of collocational patterns

Possibly useful for: extraction of most frequent collocations and bigrams; some bigrams and triples not collected by Word Sketches (see next)

Word Sketches

Word Sketches

URL: www.sketchengine.co.uk

Data Licenser: Lexical Computing, Ltd.

Underlying Data: numerous corpora

Main purpose: aid to lexicographers and researchers

Possibly useful for: statistical profiling of sense frequency; identification of idioms, phrasal verbs, compounds, and other chunks. Corpus Query Language allows for extensive flexibility in data retrieval.

Oxford Sentence Dictionary

Oxford Sentence Dictionary

URL: http://dws-sketch.uk.oup.com (?)

Data Owner: Oxford University Press

Underlying Data: Oxford English Corpus and World Wide Web

Main purpose: collection of example sentences for ESL and other purposes

Possibly useful for: Lesk-like approach to WSD; sense identification by pattern matching.

FrameNet (via FrameNet Explorer)

FrameNet

URL: http://framenet.icsi.berkeley.edu/

Data Owner: UC Berkeley

Underlying Data: BNC and other

Main purposes: manifold

Possibly useful for: complementary to Sketch Engine and OSD

Further reading: The Contribution of FrameNet to Practical Lexicography, Atkins et al, IJL 16:3 (2003)

Disambiguation of Collocations

Disambiguation of Collocations

90% of V+N and N+V collocations resolve to a single sense for each

10% of these represent multiple senses and require further context to disambiguate, e.g.

bring case [V* obj N]:I didn't have enough evidence to bring the case to court.

letter refer [N* subj V]:The letters 'c' and 'x' refer to the dilution factor used.

Disambiguation of Collocations

90% of V+N and N+V collocations resolve to a single sense for each

10% of these represent multiple senses and require further context to disambiguate, e.g.

bring case [V* obj N]:I didn't have enough evidence to bring the case to court.Her husband Ian brought a case of wine and a box of glasses.letter refer [N* subj V]:The letters 'c' and 'x' refer to the dilution factor used.Michael's letter refers very frequently to 'export-oriented consumed-productivity standards.'

Disambiguation of Collocations

URL: none (data is not currently online)

Data Owner: University of Rome, La Sapienza (Roberto Navigli)

Underlying Data: BNC and Just the Word; WordNet

Main purpose: disambiguation of collocations

Possibly useful for: a bigram dictionary (N+V and V+N only)

The Century
Dictionary

The Century Dictionary

URL: http://www.global-language.com/CENTURY/ and http://www.archive.org/details/centurydictionar11whit

Data Owner: public domain

Underlying data: late 19th century English

Main purpose: a work of universal reference in all departments of knowledge

Possibly useful for: same!

Thanks!

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