Towards the Inference of Semantic Relations in Complex Nominals: a Pilot Study

Abstract

Complex nominals (CNs) (e.g. wind turbine) are very common in English specialized texts (Nakov, 2013). However, all too frequently they show similar external forms but encode different semantic relations because of noun packing. This paper describes the use of paraphrases that convey the conceptual content of English two-term CNs (Nakov and Hearst, 2006) in the domain of environmental science. The semantic analysis of CNs was complemented by the use of knowledge patterns (KPs), which are lexico-syntactic patterns that usually convey semantic relations in real texts (Meyer, 2001; Marshman, 2006). Furthermore, the constituents of CNs were semantically annotated with conceptual categories (e.g. beach [LANDFORM] erosion [PROCESS]) with a view to disambiguating the semantic relation between the constituents of the CN and developing a procedure to infer the semantic relations in these multi-word terms. The results showed that the combination of KPs and paraphrases is a helpful approach to the semantics of CNs. Accordingly, the conceptual annotation of the constituents of CNs revealed similar patterns in the formation of these complex terms, which can lead to the inference of concealed semantic relations.

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