A Survey on Semantic Processing Techniques

Semantic processing is a fundamental research domain in computational linguistics. In the era of powerful pre-trained language models and large language models, the advancement of research in this domain appears to be decelerating. However, the study of semantics is multi-dimensional in linguistics. The research depth and breadth of computational semantic processing can be largely improved with new technologies. In this survey, we analyzed five semantic processing tasks, e.g., word sense disambiguation, anaphora resolution, named entity recognition, concept extraction, and subjectivity detection. We study relevant theoretical research in these fields, advanced methods, and downstream applications. We connect the surveyed tasks with downstream applications because this may inspire future scholars to fuse these low-level semantic processing tasks with high-level natural language processing tasks. The review of theoretical research may also inspire new tasks and technologies in the semantic processing domain. Finally, we compare the different semantic processing techniques and summarize their technical trends, application trends, and future directions.Comment: Published at Information Fusion, Volume 101, 2024, 101988, ISSN 1566-2535. The equal contribution mark is missed in the published version due to the publication policies. Please contact Prof. Erik Cambria for detail

Mining complex trees for hidden fruit : a graph–based computational solution to detect latent criminal networks : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Information Technology at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand.

The detection of crime is a complex and difficult endeavour. Public and private organisations – focusing on law enforcement, intelligence, and compliance – commonly apply the rational isolated actor approach premised on observability and materiality. This is manifested largely as conducting entity-level risk management sourcing ‘leads’ from reactive covert human intelligence sources and/or proactive sources by applying simple rules-based models. Focusing on discrete observable and material actors simply ignores that criminal activity exists within a complex system deriving its fundamental structural fabric from the complex interactions between actors - with those most unobservable likely to be both criminally proficient and influential. The graph-based computational solution developed to detect latent criminal networks is a response to the inadequacy of the rational isolated actor approach that ignores the connectedness and complexity of criminality. The core computational solution, written in the R language, consists of novel entity resolution, link discovery, and knowledge discovery technology. Entity resolution enables the fusion of multiple datasets with high accuracy (mean F-measure of 0.986 versus competitors 0.872), generating a graph-based expressive view of the problem. Link discovery is comprised of link prediction and link inference, enabling the high-performance detection (accuracy of ~0.8 versus relevant published models ~0.45) of unobserved relationships such as identity fraud. Knowledge discovery uses the fused graph generated and applies the “GraphExtract” algorithm to create a set of subgraphs representing latent functional criminal groups, and a mesoscopic graph representing how this set of criminal groups are interconnected. Latent knowledge is generated from a range of metrics including the “Super-broker” metric and attitude prediction. The computational solution has been evaluated on a range of datasets that mimic an applied setting, demonstrating a scalable (tested on ~18 million node graphs) and performant (~33 hours runtime on a non-distributed platform) solution that successfully detects relevant latent functional criminal groups in around 90% of cases sampled and enables the contextual understanding of the broader criminal system through the mesoscopic graph and associated metadata. The augmented data assets generated provide a multi-perspective systems view of criminal activity that enable advanced informed decision making across the microscopic mesoscopic macroscopic spectrum

From Frequency to Meaning: Vector Space Models of Semantics

Computers understand very little of the meaning of human language. This profoundly limits our ability to give instructions to computers, the ability of computers to explain their actions to us, and the ability of computers to analyse and process text. Vector space models (VSMs) of semantics are beginning to address these limits. This paper surveys the use of VSMs for semantic processing of text. We organize the literature on VSMs according to the structure of the matrix in a VSM. There are currently three broad classes of VSMs, based on term-document, word-context, and pair-pattern matrices, yielding three classes of applications. We survey a broad range of applications in these three categories and we take a detailed look at a specific open source project in each category. Our goal in this survey is to show the breadth of applications of VSMs for semantics, to provide a new perspective on VSMs for those who are already familiar with the area, and to provide pointers into the literature for those who are less familiar with the field

Semi-Supervised Named Entity Recognition:\ud Learning to Recognize 100 Entity Types with Little Supervision\ud

Named Entity Recognition (NER) aims to extract and to classify rigid designators in text such as proper names, biological species, and temporal expressions. There has been growing interest in this field of research since the early 1990s. In this thesis, we document a trend moving away from handcrafted rules, and towards machine learning approaches. Still, recent machine learning approaches have a problem with annotated data availability, which is a serious shortcoming in building and maintaining large-scale NER systems. \ud \ud In this thesis, we present an NER system built with very little supervision. Human supervision is indeed limited to listing a few examples of each named entity (NE) type. First, we introduce a proof-of-concept semi-supervised system that can recognize four NE types. Then, we expand its capacities by improving key technologies, and we apply the system to an entire hierarchy comprised of 100 NE types. \ud \ud Our work makes the following contributions: the creation of a proof-of-concept semi-supervised NER system; the demonstration of an innovative noise filtering technique for generating NE lists; the validation of a strategy for learning disambiguation rules using automatically identified, unambiguous NEs; and finally, the development of an acronym detection algorithm, thus solving a rare but very difficult problem in alias resolution. \ud \ud We believe semi-supervised learning techniques are about to break new ground in the machine learning community. In this thesis, we show that limited supervision can build complete NER systems. On standard evaluation corpora, we report performances that compare to baseline supervised systems in the task of annotating NEs in texts. \u

Main Concepts, State of the Art and Future Research Questions in Sentiment Analysis.

This article has multiple objectives. First of all, the fundamental concepts and challenges of the research field known as Sentiment Analysis (SA) are presented. Secondly, a summary of a chronological account of the research performed in SA is provided as well as some bibliometric indicators that shed some light on the most frequently used techniques for addressing the central aspects of SA. The geographical locations of where the research took place are also given. In closing, it is argued that there is no hard evidence that fuzzy sets or hybrid approaches encompassing unsupervised learning, fuzzy sets and a solid psychological background of emotions could not be at least as effective as supervised learning techniques