A Taxonomy for English Nouns and Verbs

A TAXONOMY FOR ENGLISH NOUNS AND VERBS Robert A. Amsler Computer Sciences Department University of Texas, Austin. TX 78712 ABSTRACT: The definition texts of a machine-readable pocket dictionary were analyzed to determine the disambiguated word sense of the kernel terms of each word sense being defined. The resultant sets of word pairs of defined and defining words were then computaCionally connected into t~o taxonomic semi- lattices ("tangled hierarchies") representing some 24,000 noun nodes and 11,000 verb nodes. The study of the nature of the "topmost" nodes in these hierarchies. and the structure of the trees reveal information about the nature of the dictionary's organization of the language, the concept of semantic primitives and other aspects of lexical semantics. The data proves that the dictionary offers a fundamentally consistent description of word meaning and may provide the basis for future research and applications in computational linguistic systems. 1. INTRODUCTION In the late 1960"s, John 01ney et al. at System Development Corporation produced machine-readable copies of the Merriam-Webster New Pocke~ Dictionary and the Sevent~ Collegiate Dictionary. These massive data files have been widely distributed within the computational linguistic community, yet research upon the basic structure of the dictionary has been exceedingly slow and difficult due to the Significant computer resources required to process tens of thousands of definitions. The dictionary is a fascinating computational resource. It contains spelling, pronunciation, hyphenation, capitalization, usage notes for semantic domains, geographic regions, and propriety; etymological, syntactic and semantic information about the most basic units of the language. Accompanying definitions are example sentences which often use words in prototypical contexts. Thus the dictionary should be able to serve as a resource for a variety of computational linguistic needs. My primary concern within the dictionary has been the development of dictionary data for use in understanding systems. Thus I am concerned with what dictionary definitions tell us about the semantic and pragmatic structure of meaning. The hypothesis I am proposing is that definitions in the lexicon can be studied in the same manner as other large collections of objects such as plants, animals, and minerals are studied. Thus I am concerned with enunerating the classifications1 organization of the lexicon as it has been implicitly used by the dictionary's lexicographers. Each textual definition in the dictionary is syntactically a noun or verb phrase with one or more kernel terms. If one identifies these kernel terms of definitions, and then proceeds to disambiguate them relative to the senses offered in the same dictionary under their respective definitions, then one can arrive at a large collection of pairs of disambiguated words which can be assembled into a taxonomic semi-lattice. This task has been accomplished for all the definition texts of nouns and verbs in a comu~n pocket dictionary. This paper is an effort to reveal the results of a preliminary examination of the structure of these databases. The applications of this data are still in the future. What might these applications be? First, the data shoul'd provide information on the contents …

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