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

Abstract

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.

Paintball – Automated Wordnet Expansion Algorithm based on Distributional Semantics and Information Spreading

“…However, it expresses several very significant differences when it comes to the underlying model. First of all, the plWordNet model is conse-quently based on LUs (lexical units) as the basic building blocks, cf [8,40] and especially [41]. In short, synset groups LUs that share lexical-semantic relations (of selected types called constitutive relations).…”

Dynamic verbs in the Wordnet of Polish

“…The plWordNet model (cf Broda, 2009 andSzpakowicz, 2013) is based on lexical units (LUs, i.e. triples: lemma, Part of Speech, sense identifier) as basic building blocks.…”

“…Constitutive features are often referred to in the definitions of lexico-semantic relations, e.g. hyper/hyponymy is defined only for adjectives of the same class or inter-register synonymy links LUs of non-compatible lexical registers (cf Maziarz et al, 2013).…”

Towards knowledge modeling and manipulation technologies: A survey

“…Knowledge in WordNet is represented as a semantic network formed by synsets (cognitive synonyms) (Lee, Huh, & McNiel, 2008). A set of synonyms that serve as identifying definitions of lexicalized concepts are referred to as synsets (Maziarz et al, 2013;Montejo-Raez et al, 2014). Similar to FN, the lexical units in WN tend to be derived from their connection with other members of the same synset as well as from their lexical-semantic association with other synsets (Marrafa, 2002;Saif et al, 2015;Wei et al, 2015).…”