The chicken-and-egg problem in wordnet design: synonymy, synsets and constitutive relations

  • Authors:

  • Marek Maziarz;Maciej Piasecki;Stanisław Szpakowicz

  • Affiliations:

  • Institute of Informatics, Wrocław University of Technology, Wrocław, Poland;Institute of Informatics, Wrocław University of Technology, Wrocław, Poland;School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada and Institute of Computer Science, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warszawa, Poland

  • Venue:
  • Language Resources and Evaluation
  • Year:
  • 2013

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Abstract

Wordnets are built of synsets, not of words. A synset consists of words. Synonymy is a relation between words. Words go into a synset because they are synonyms. Later, a wordnet treats words as synonymous because they belong in the same synset $$\ldots$$ 驴 Such circularity, a well-known problem, poses a practical difficulty in wordnet construction, notably when it comes to maintaining consistency. We propose to make a wordnet a net of words or, to be more precise, lexical units. We discuss our assumptions and present their implementation in a steadily growing Polish wordnet. A small set of constitutive relations allows us to construct synsets automatically out of groups of lexical units with the same connectivity. Our analysis includes a thorough comparative overview of systems of relations in several influential wordnets. The additional synset-forming mechanisms include stylistic registers and verb aspect.