Lexical Discovery with an Enriched Semantic Network

Abstract

The study of lexical semantics has produced a systematic analysis of relationships between content words that has greatly bene#ted both lexical search tools and natural language processing systems. We describe researchtoward a common algorithmic core for these two applications. We #rst introduce a database system called FreeNet that facilitates the description and exploration #nite binary relations. We then describe the design and implementation of Lexical FreeNet, a semantic network that mixes WordNet-derived semantic relations with data-derived and phonetically-derived relations. We discuss how Lexical FreeNet has aided in lexical discovery, the pursuit of linguistic and factual knowledge by the computer-aided exploration of lexical relations, and relate this to ongoing researchinhow the system can be employed in natural language processing algorithms for segmentation and summarization. Submission Type: Paper for Coling-ACL '98 Workshop, #Usage of WordNet in Natural Langua..