Skip to main content

On the Structural Disambiguation of Multi-word Terms

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Computational and Corpus-Based Phraseology (EUROPHRAS 2019)

Abstract

Multi-word terms pose many challenges in Natural Language Processing (NLP) because of their structure ambiguity. Although the structural disambiguation of multi-word expressions, also known as bracketing, has been widely studied, no definitive solution has as yet been found. Although linguists, terminologists, and translators must deal with bracketing problems, they generally must resolve problems without using advanced NLP systems. This paper describes a series of manual steps for the bracketing of multi-word terms (MWTs) based on their linguistic properties and recent advances in NLP. After analyzing 100 three- and four-term combinations, a set of criteria for MWT bracketing was devised and arranged in a step-by-step protocol based on frequency and reliability. Also presented is a case study that illustrates the procedure.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 79.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Although MWTs can also be postmodified (angle of attack), premodification is the preferred MWT formation pattern [3, 15, 16].

References

  1. Lauer, M.: Designing statistical language learners: experiments on noun compounds. Ph.D. Macquarie University, Australia (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Girju, R., Moldovan, D., Tatu, M., Antohe, D.: On the semantics of noun compounds. Comput. Speech Lang. 19(4), 479–496 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Nakov, P.: On the interpretation of noun compounds: syntax, semantics, and entailment. Nat. Lang. Eng. 19(03), 291–330 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Kim, S.N., Baldwin, T.: A lexical semantic approach to interpreting and bracketing English noun compounds. Nat. Lang. Eng. 19(3), 385–407 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Barrière, C., Ménard, P.A.: Multiword noun compound bracketing using Wikipedia. In: Proceedings of the First Workshop on Computational Approaches to Compound Analysis, Dublin, Ireland, pp. 72–80 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Marsh, E.: A computational analysis of complex noun phrases in navy messages. In: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Standford, CA, pp. 505–508 (1984)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Nakov, P., Hearst, M.: Search engine statistics beyond the n-gram: application to noun compound bracketing. In: Proceedings of the Ninth Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning, CoNLL 2005, Ann Arbor, MI, pp. 17–24 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Utsumi, A.: A semantic space approach to the computational semantics of noun compounds. Nat. Lang. Eng. 20, 185–234 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Johnston, M., Busa, F.: Qualia structure and the compositional interpretation of compounds. In: Viegas, E. (ed.) Breadth and Depth of Semantic Lexicons, pp. 167–187. Springer, Dordrecht (1999). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0952-1_9

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  10. Cabezas-García, M., Faber, P.: A semantic approach to the inclusion of complex nominals in english terminographic resources. In: Mitkov, R. (ed.) EUROPHRAS 2017. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 10596, pp. 145–159. Springer, Cham (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69805-2_11

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  11. Marcus, M.: A Theory of Syntactic Recognition for Natural Language. MIT Press, Cambridge (1980)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  12. Pustejovsky, J., Anick, P., Bergler, S.: Lexical semantic techniques for corpus analysis. Comput. Linguist. 19(2), 331–358 (1993)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Grefenstette, G.: Explorations in Automatic Thesaurus Discovery. Kluwer Academic Press, Boston (1994)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  14. Kilgarriff, A., et al.: The sketch engine: ten years on. Lexicography 1(1), 7–36 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Levi, J.: The Syntax and Semantics of Complex Nominals. Academic Press, New York (1978)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Sager, J.C., Dungworth, D., McDonald, P.F.: English Special Languages. Principles and Practice in Science and Technology. Brandstetter Verlag, Wiesbaden (1980)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Faber, P.: A Cognitive Linguistics View of Terminology and Specialized Language. De Gruyter Mouton, Berlin/Boston (2012)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  18. San Martín, A., Cabezas-García, M., Buendía, M., Sánchez-Cárdenas, B., León-Araúz, P., Faber, P.: Recent advances in EcoLexicon. Dictionaries: J. Dictionary Soc. North Am. 38(1), 96–115 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This research was carried out as part of project FFI2017-89127-P, Translation-Oriented Terminology Tools for Environmental Texts (TOTEM), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. Funding was also provided by an FPU grant given by the Spanish Ministry of Education to the first author.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Melania Cabezas-García or Pilar León-Araúz .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Cabezas-García, M., León-Araúz, P. (2019). On the Structural Disambiguation of Multi-word Terms. In: Corpas Pastor, G., Mitkov, R. (eds) Computational and Corpus-Based Phraseology. EUROPHRAS 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11755. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30135-4_4

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30135-4_4

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-30134-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-30135-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics