Re: [Corpora-List] Semantic Distances Revisited

From: PbIKOB_B.B. (rykov@narod.ru)
Date: Tue Dec 03 2002 - 08:49:07 MET

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                  Daniel and Chris - my remark.

      Just regarding positioning of both approaches.
      
      IMHO in Traditional Linguistics terms (there are some survivors here) the 1st one belongs to SD in Language and the last one - to SD in Speech.

      My apologies in advance to our CL list members pained by my explanation and mentioning Traditional Linguistics.

              Vladimir

     

    >>>It's great stuff, although it's taxonomy-based.
    >>>I was specifically interested in distributional methods.
    >
    >> And what is the difference - if it is possible to answer?
    >
    >I'll give it a try -- apologies in advance to more-experienced list members
    >pained by my explanation.
    >
    >In a taxonomy, items are typically represented as nodes of a tree. So when
    >you're measuring how similar two items are, you find them both on the tree,
    >and then calculate how close they are to each other. (There are different
    >ways to do this, and that's where the Hirst and Budanitsky article comes
    >in.)
    >It's a great approach, if you have the taxonomy already built for you.
    >The pitfalls of making a taxonomy are well-known: it's a lot of work, your
    >taxonomy may not hold across languages, and it's hard not to let your
    >taxonomy reflect your biases.
    >
    >Distribution-based methods don't use a taxonomy; they attempt to find
    >similarity based on the surrounding words. Again, there are many ways to do
    >this, but the underlying assumption is that words that appear in similar
    >contexts are similar to each other. E.g. Beth Levin in her work with
    >English verb classes, makes the striking assertion that verbs that exhibit
    >similar syntactic behaviour are semantically related. Quite a revelation
    >for a linguist such as myself -- linguists have traditionally studied
    >syntax, while putting semantics in the "too-hard" basket. This work showed
    >that syntax can be a key to semantics.
    >
    >That's a really basic overview.
    >Phil Resnik gives a thorough review of both kinds of methods in his
    >dissertation. You can find it at:
    >http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/resnik93selection.html
    >His Lexical Acquisition talk at ACL 2002 changed my life. And may I add,
    >he's one heck of a dancer.
    >
    >Feedback welcome.
    >Daniel
    >
    >=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
    >Daniel Midgley
    >dmidgley@arts.uwa.edu.au
    >+ (61 8) 9371 3730
    >http://www.cs.uwa.edu.au/~fontor
    >
    >
    >
    >

    -- 
    

    P bI K O B B.B. MOCKBA

    Vladimir Rykov, PhD in Computational Linguistics, MOSCOW http://rykov.narod.ru/ Engl. http://www.blkbox.com/~gigawatt/rykov.html Tel +7-903-749-19-99



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