A Matrix-Based Heuristic Algorithm for Extracting Multiword Expressions from a Corpus

Bilgin, Orhan (2022) A Matrix-Based Heuristic Algorithm for Extracting Multiword Expressions from a Corpus. In: 13th Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC 2022), 2022-06-21 - 2022-06-25.

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Abstract

This paper describes an algorithm for automatically extracting multiword expressions (MWEs) from a corpus. The algorithm is node-based, ie extracts MWEs that contain the item specified by the user, using a fixed window-size around the node. The main idea is to detect the frequency anomalies that occur at the starting and ending points of an ngram that constitutes a MWE. This is achieved by locally comparing matrices of observed frequencies to matrices of expected frequencies, and determining, for each individual input, one or more sub-sequences that have the highest probability of being a MWE. Top-performing sub-sequences are then combined in a score-aggregation and ranking stage, thus producing a single list of score-ranked MWE candidates, without having to indiscriminately generate all possible sub-sequences of the input strings. The knowledge-poor and computationally efficient algorithm attempts to solve certain recurring problems in MWE extraction, such as the inability to deal with MWEs of arbitrary length, the repetitive counting of nested ngrams, and excessive sensitivity to frequency. Evaluation results show that the best-performing version generates top-50 precision values between 0.71 and 0.88 on Turkish and English data, and performs better than the baseline method even at n= 1000.

Item Type:
Contribution to Conference (Paper)
Journal or Publication Title:
13th Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC 2022) : 18th Workshop on Multiword Expressions (MWE 2022)
ID Code:
189040
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
29 Mar 2023 08:10
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
17 Oct 2024 00:10