Semantic Theory: Lexical Semantics I - uni-saarland.de¥There is no clear outer boundary for the set of readings of a lexical item, because of meaning extensions and figurative uses
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• WordNet represents a layer of the semantic lexicon ofEnglish as a network of semantic relations, with thehyponymy relation and its inverse relation, hypernymy,as its backbone.
• The nodes of the semantic network are „synsets“: Setsof synonymous words, which represent concepts/ wordsenses.
• Synsets directly provide synonymy information, andinformation about the word-concept mapping: A(orthographic) word has all those senses/synsets asreadings, of which it is a member.
• In cases where no or too few synonyms are available forsense distinction, WordNet glosses and examples helpto disambiguate.
• S: (n) car, auto, automobile, machine, motorcar (a motorvehicle with four wheels; usually propelled by an internalcombustion engine) "he needs a car to get to work"
• S: (n) car, railcar, railway car, railroad car (a wheeledvehicle adapted to the rails of railroad) "three cars hadjumped the rails"
• S: (n) car, gondola (the compartment that is suspendedfrom an airship and that carries personnel and the cargoand the power plant)
• S: (n) car, elevator car (where passengers ride up anddown) "the car was on the top floor"
• S: (n) cable car, car (a conveyance for passengers orfreight on a cable railway) "they took a cable car to thetop of the mountain"
• S: (n) motor vehicle, automotive vehicle (a self-propelled wheeled vehiclethat does not run on rails)
• direct hyponym / full hyponym– S: (n) amphibian, amphibious vehicle (a flat-bottomed motor vehicle that can travel
on land or water)
– S: (n) bloodmobile (a motor vehicle equipped to collect blood donations)
– S: (n) car, auto, automobile, machine, motorcar (a motor vehicle with four wheels;usually propelled by an internal combustion engine) "he needs a car to get towork"
– S: (n) doodlebug (a small motor vehicle)
– S: (n) four-wheel drive, 4WD (a motor vehicle with a four-wheel drive transmissionsystem)
– S: (n) go-kart (a small low motor vehicle with four wheels and an open framework;used for racing)
– S: (n) golfcart, golf cart (a small motor vehicle in which golfers can ride betweenshots)
– S: (n) hearse (a vehicle for carrying a coffin to a church or a cemetery; formerlydrawn by horses but now usually a motor vehicle)
– S: (n) motorcycle, bike (a motor vehicle with two wheels and a strong frame)
– S: (n) snowplow, snowplough (a vehicle used to push snow from roads)
• WordNet consists of different, basically unrelated data-bases for common nouns, verbs, adjectives (andadverbs). There are more semantic relations for thePOS-specific databases (in particular for verbs).
• Different parts of WordNet differ in their granularity. Ingeneral, WordNet tends to be too fine-granular for manypurposes (assuming sense distinctions and requiringword-sense disambiguations in cases of subtle variantsof usage).
• WordNet focusses on paratactic semantic relationsbetween single words. It lacks information which isnecessary for building predicate-argument structure.
• Monolingual dictionaries, alpabeticallyordered, provide informal meaninginformation about the readings of a wordinformally, through synonyms, glosses,typical examples, etc.
• A thesaurus groups the lexicon of alanguage according to the semanticallyrelatedness of the words.
• An ontology is the product of an attempt toformulate an exhaustive and rigorous conceptualscheme about a domain. An ontology is typicallya hierarchical data structure containing all therelevant entities and their relationships and ruleswithin that domain (eg. a domain ontology).
• An ontology which is not tied to a particularproblem domain but attempts to describegeneral entities is known as a foundationontology or upper ontology.