The chicken-and-egg problem in wordnet design: synonymy, synsets and constitutive relations

  Authors

Maziarz, Marek ; Piasecki, Maciej ; Szpakowicz, Stanisław

 Date issued

2013-04-18

 Type

languageDescription

 Language(s)

English

 Description

Wordnets are built of synsets, not of words. A synset consists of words. Synonymy is a relation between words. Words go into a synset because they are synonyms. Later, a wordnet treats words as synonymous because they belong in the same synset. . . Such circularity, a well-known problem, poses a practical difficulty in wordnet construction, notably when it comes to maintaining consistency. We propose to make a wordnet a net of words or, to be more precise, lexical units. We discuss our assumptions and present their implementation in a steadily growing Polish wordnet. A small set of constitutive relations allows us to construct synsets automatically out of groups of lexical units with the same connectivity. Our analysis includes a thorough comparative overview of systems of relations in several influential wordnets. The additional synset-forming mechanisms include stylistic registers and verb aspect.

 Publisher

Springer (The Netherlands)

 Subject(s)

wordnet WordNet synset lexical unit plWordNet wordnet relations constitutive relations aspect register

 Collection(s)

CLARIN-PL

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