An overview of word and sense similarity. (25th July 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Navigli, Roberto; Martelli, Federico
• Is Part Of: Natural language engineering. Volume 25:Part 6(2019)
• Page Start: 693
• Page End: 714
• Publication Date: 2019-07-25
• Subjects: semantic similarity, -- word similarity, -- sense similarity, -- distributional semantics, -- knowledge-based similarity; Natural language processing (Computer science) -- Periodicals; Software engineering -- Periodicals; 006.35
• DOI: 10.1017/S1351324919000305
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1351-3249

Abstract

Abstract: Over the last two decades, determining the similarity between words as well as between their meanings, that is, word senses, has been proven to be of vital importance in the field of Natural Language Processing. This paper provides the reader with an introduction to the tasks of computing word and sense similarity. These consist in computing the degree of semantic likeness between words and senses, respectively. First, we distinguish between two major approaches: the knowledge-based approaches and the distributional approaches. Second, we detail the representations and measures employed for computing similarity. We then illustrate the evaluation settings available in the literature and, finally, discuss suggestions for future research.