Recurrent Markov Cluster (RMCL) Algorithm for the Refinement of the Semantic Network
Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2006)
Abstract
The purpose of this work is to propose a new methodology to ameliorate the Markov Cluster (MCL) Algorithm that is well known as an efficient way of graph clustering (Van Dongen, 2000). The MCL when applied to a graph of word associations has the effect of producing concept areas in which words are grouped into the similar topics or similar meanings as paradigms. However, since a word is determined to belong to only one cluster that represents a concept, Markov clusters cannot show the polysemy or semantic indetermination among the properties of natural language. Our Recurrent MCL (RMCL) allows us to create a virtual adjacency relationship among the Markov hard clusters and produce a downsized and intrinsically informative semantic network of word association data. We applied one of the RMCL algorithms (Stepping-stone type) to a Japanese associative concept dictionary and obtained a satisfactory level of performance in refining the semantic network generated from MCL.