Zipf's Law and Avoidance of Excessive Synonymy

Zipf's Law and Avoidance of Excessive Synonymy

Zipf's law states that if words of language are ranked in the order of decreasing frequency in texts, the frequency of a word is inversely proportional to its rank. It is very reliably observed in the data, but to date it escaped satisfactory theoretical explanation. This article suggests that Zipf's law may result from a hierarchical organization of word meanings over the semantic space, which...

International Law and Social Science: A Mild Plea in Avoidance

Synonymy and Word Equivalence

Two words which share a sense are commonly called synonyms. They are equivalent in the context of that sense, and can be used interchangeably in a sentence which utilizes that sense. Two words are rarely synonyms for each other for all of their senses. With the advent of on-line-accessible lexicons it is possible to identify those words which are, in all contexts, interchangeable or `equivalent...

Relative Synonymy and Conceptual Vectors

Synonymy is a pivot relation in NLP but remains problematic. Putting forward, we introduce the notion of relative synonymy, to circumvent some diÆculties among which possible polysemy and contextual interpretation. In the framework of conceptual vectors, it is then possible to formalize test functions for synonymy and to experiment their use in thematic analysis that will help text classi cation.

Near-Synonymy and Lexical Choice

dimension seep : drip Emphasis enemy : foe Denotational, indirect error : mistake Denotational, fuzzy woods : forest Stylistic, formality pissed : drunk : inebriated Stylistic, force ruin : annihilate Expressed attitude skinny : thin : slim, slender Emotive daddy : dad : father Collocational task : job Selectional pass away : die Subcategorization give : donate 2.3 Dimensions of variation The p...