Is This a Joke? Detecting Humor in Spanish Tweets

While humor has been historically studied from a psychological, cognitive and linguistic standpoint, its study from a computational perspective is an area yet to be explored in Computational Linguistics. There exist some previous works, but a characterization of humor that allows its automatic recognition and generation is far from being specified. In this work we build a crowdsourced corpus of labeled tweets, annotated according to its humor value, letting the annotators subjectively decide which are humorous. A humor classifier for Spanish tweets is assembled based on supervised learning, reaching a precision of 84% and a recall of 69%.Comment: Preprint version, without referra

One Homonym per Translation

The study of homonymy is vital to resolving fundamental problems in lexical semantics. In this paper, we propose four hypotheses that characterize the unique behavior of homonyms in the context of translations, discourses, collocations, and sense clusters. We present a new annotated homonym resource that allows us to test our hypotheses on existing WSD resources. The results of the experiments provide strong empirical evidence for the hypotheses. This study represents a step towards a computational method for distinguishing between homonymy and polysemy, and constructing a definitive inventory of coarse-grained senses.Comment: 8 pages, including reference

A fuzzy-based approach for classifying students' emotional states in online collaborative work

(c) 2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.Emotion awareness is becoming a key aspect in collaborative work at academia, enterprises and organizations that use collaborative group work in their activity. Due to pervasiveness of ICT's, most of collaboration can be performed through communication media channels such as discussion forums, social networks, etc. The emotive state of the users while they carry out their activity such as collaborative learning at Universities or project work at enterprises and organizations influences very much their performance and can actually determine the final learning or project outcome. Therefore, monitoring the users' emotive states and using that information for providing feedback and scaffolding is crucial. To this end, automated analysis over data collected from communication channels is a useful source. In this paper, we propose an approach to process such collected data in order to classify and assess emotional states of involved users and provide them feedback accordingly to their emotive states. In order to achieve this, a fuzzy approach is used to build the emotive classification system, which is fed with data from ANEW dictionary, whose words are bound to emotional weights and these, in turn, are used to map Fuzzy sets in our proposal. The proposed fuzzy-based system has been evaluated using real data from collaborative learning courses in an academic context.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Verb similarity: comparing corpus and psycholinguistic data

Similarity, which plays a key role in fields like cognitive science, psycholinguistics and natural language processing, is a broad and multifaceted concept. In this work we analyse how two approaches that belong to different perspectives, the corpus view and the psycholinguistic view, articulate similarity between verb senses in Spanish. Specifically, we compare the similarity between verb senses based on their argument structure, which is captured through semantic roles, with their similarity defined by word associations. We address the question of whether verb argument structure, which reflects the expression of the events, and word associations, which are related to the speakers' organization of the mental lexicon, shape similarity between verbs in a congruent manner, a topic which has not been explored previously. While we find significant correlations between verb sense similarities obtained from these two approaches, our findings also highlight some discrepancies between them and the importance of the degree of abstraction of the corpus annotation and psycholinguistic representations.La similitud, que desempeña un papel clave en campos como la ciencia cognitiva, la psicolingüística y el procesamiento del lenguaje natural, es un concepto amplio y multifacético. En este trabajo analizamos cómo dos enfoques que pertenecen a diferentes perspectivas, la visión del corpus y la visión psicolingüística, articulan la semejanza entre los sentidos verbales en español. Específicamente, comparamos la similitud entre los sentidos verbales basados en su estructura argumental, que se capta a través de roles semánticos, con su similitud definida por las asociaciones de palabras. Abordamos la cuestión de si la estructura del argumento verbal, que refleja la expresión de los acontecimientos, y las asociaciones de palabras, que están relacionadas con la organización de los hablantes del léxico mental, forman similitud entre los verbos de una manera congruente, un tema que no ha sido explorado previamente. Mientras que encontramos correlaciones significativas entre las similitudes de los sentidos verbales obtenidas de estos dos enfoques, nuestros hallazgos también resaltan algunas discrepancias entre ellos y la importancia del grado de abstracción de la anotación del corpus y las representaciones psicolingüísticas.La similitud, que exerceix un paper clau en camps com la ciència cognitiva, la psicolingüística i el processament del llenguatge natural, és un concepte ampli i multifacètic. En aquest treball analitzem com dos enfocaments que pertanyen a diferents perspectives, la visió del corpus i la visió psicolingüística, articulen la semblança entre els sentits verbals en espanyol. Específicament, comparem la similitud entre els sentits verbals basats en la seva estructura argumental, que es capta a través de rols semàntics, amb la seva similitud definida per les associacions de paraules. Abordem la qüestió de si l'estructura de l'argument verbal, que reflecteix l'expressió dels esdeveniments, i les associacions de paraules, que estan relacionades amb l'organització dels parlants del lèxic mental, formen similitud entre els verbs d'una manera congruent, un tema que no ha estat explorat prèviament. Mentre que trobem correlacions significatives entre les similituds dels sentits verbals obtingudes d'aquests dos enfocaments, les nostres troballes també ressalten algunes discrepàncies entre ells i la importància del grau d'abstracció de l'anotació del corpus i les representacions psicolingüístiques

Polysemy and brevity versus frequency in language

The pioneering research of G. K. Zipf on the relationship between word frequency and other word features led to the formulation of various linguistic laws. The most popular is Zipf's law for word frequencies. Here we focus on two laws that have been studied less intensively: the meaning-frequency law, i.e. the tendency of more frequent words to be more polysemous, and the law of abbreviation, i.e. the tendency of more frequent words to be shorter. In a previous work, we tested the robustness of these Zipfian laws for English, roughly measuring word length in number of characters and distinguishing adult from child speech. In the present article, we extend our study to other languages (Dutch and Spanish) and introduce two additional measures of length: syllabic length and phonemic length. Our correlation analysis indicates that both the meaning-frequency law and the law of abbreviation hold overall in all the analyzed languages

Methodology and evaluation of the Galician WordNet expansion with the WN-Toolkit

In this paper the methodology and a detailed evaluation of the results of the expansion of the Galician WordNet using the WN-Toolkit are presented. This toolkit allows the creation and expansion of wordnets using the expand model. In our experiments we have used methodologies based on dictionaries and parallel corpora. The evaluation of the results has been performed both in an automatic and in a manual way, allowing a comparison of the precision values obtained with both evaluation procedures. The manual evaluation provides details about the source of the errors. This information has been very useful for the improvement of the toolkit and for the correction of some errors in the reference WordNet for Galician.En este artículo se presenta la metodología utilizada en la expansión del WordNet del gallego mediante el WN-Toolkit, así como una evaluación detallada de los resultados obtenidos. El conjunto de herramientas incluido en el WN-Toolkit permite la creación o expansión de wordnets siguiendo la estrategia de expansión. En los experimentos presentados en este artículo se han utilizado estrategias basadas en diccionarios y en corpus paralelos. La evaluación de los resultados se ha realizado de manera tanto automática como manual, permitiendo así la comparación de los valores de precisión obtenidos. La evaluación manual también detalla la fuente de los errores, lo que ha sido de utilidad tanto para mejorar el propio WN-Toolkit, como para corregir los errores del WordNet de referencia para el gallego.En aquest article es presenta la metodologia utilitzada en l'expansió del WordNet del gallec mitjançant el WN-Toolkit, així com una avaluació detallada dels resultats obtinguts. El conjunt d'eines inclòs en el WN-Toolkit permet la creació o expansió de wordnets seguint l'estratègia d'expansió. En els experiments presentats en aquest article s'han utilitzat estratègies basades en diccionaris i en corpus paral·lels. L'avaluació dels resultats s'ha realitzat de manera tant automàtica com a manual, permetent així la comparació dels valors de precisió obtinguts. L'avaluació manual també detalla la font dels errors, la qual cosa ha estat d'utilitat tant per millorar el propi WN-Toolkit, com per corregir els errors del WordNet de referència per al gallec

Towards a Universal Wordnet by Learning from Combined Evidenc

Lexical databases are invaluable sources of knowledge about words and their meanings, with numerous applications in areas like NLP, IR, and AI. We propose a methodology for the automatic construction of a large-scale multilingual lexical database where words of many languages are hierarchically organized in terms of their meanings and their semantic relations to other words. This resource is bootstrapped from WordNet, a well-known English-language resource. Our approach extends WordNet with around 1.5 million meaning links for 800,000 words in over 200 languages, drawing on evidence extracted from a variety of resources including existing (monolingual) wordnets, (mostly bilingual) translation dictionaries, and parallel corpora. Graph-based scoring functions and statistical learning techniques are used to iteratively integrate this information and build an output graph. Experiments show that this wordnet has a high level of precision and coverage, and that it can be useful in applied tasks such as cross-lingual text classification

Building layered, multilingual sentiment lexicons at synset and lemma levels

Many tasks related to sentiment analysis rely on sentiment lexicons, lexical resources containing information about the emotional implications of words (e.g., sentiment orientation of words, positive or negative). In this work, we present an automatic method for building lemma-level sentiment lexicons, which has been applied to obtain lexicons for English, Spanish and other three official languages in Spain. Our lexicons are multi-layered, allowing applications to trade off between the amount of available words and the accuracy of the estimations. Our evaluations show high accuracy values in all cases. As a previous step to the lemma-level lexicons, we have built a synset-level lexicon for English similar to SENTIWORDNET 3.0, one of the most used sentiment lexicons nowadays. We have made several improvements in the original SENTIWORDNET 3.0 building method, reflecting significantly better estimations of positivity and negativity, according to our evaluations. The resource containing all the lexicons, ML-SENTICON, is publicly available.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2012-38536-C03-0

Metodología y evaluación de la expansión del WordNet del gallego con WN-Toolkit

In this paper the methodology and a detailed evaluation of the results of the expansion of the Galician WordNet using the WN-Toolkit are presented. This toolkit allows the creation and expansion of wordnets using the expand model. In our experiments we have used methodologies based on dictionaries and parallel corpora. The evaluation of the results has been performed both in an automatic and in a manual way, allowing a comparison of the precision values obtained with both evaluation procedures. The manual evaluation provides details about the source of the errors. This information has been very useful for the improvement of the toolkit and for the correction of some errors in the reference WordNet for Galician.En este artículo se presenta la metodología utilizada en la expansión del WordNet del gallego mediante el WN-Toolkit, así como una evaluación detallada de los resultados obtenidos. El conjunto de herramientas incluido en el WN-Toolkit permite la creación o expansión de wordnets siguiendo la estrategia de expansión. En los experimentos presentados en este artículo se han utilizado estrategias basadas en diccionarios y en corpus paralelos. La evaluación de los resultados se ha realizado de manera tanto automática como manual, permitiendo así la comparación de los valores de precisión obtenidos. La evaluación manual también detalla la fuente de los errores, lo que ha sido de utilidad tanto para mejorar el propio WN-Toolkit, como para corregir los errores del WordNet de referencia para el gallego.This research has been carried out thanks to the Project SKATeR (TIN2012-38584-C06-01 and TIN2012-38584-C06-04) supported by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of the Spanish Government