Aligning FrameNet and WordNet based on Semantic Neighborhoods

This paper presents an algorithm for aligning FrameNet lexical units to WordNet synsets. Both, FrameNet and WordNet, are well-known as well as widely-used resources by the entire research community. They help systems in the comprehension of the semantics of texts, and therefore, finding strategies to link FrameNet and WordNet involves challenges related to a better understanding of the human language. Such deep analysis is exploited by researchers to improve the performance of their applications. The alignment is achieved by exploiting the particular characteristics of each lexical-semantic resource, with special emphasis on the explicit, formal semantic relations in each. Semantic neighborhoods are computed for each alignment of lemmas, and the algorithm calculates correlation scores by comparing such neighborhoods. The results suggest that the proposed algorithm is appropriate for aligning the FrameNet and WordNet hierarchies. Furthermore, the algorithm can aid research on increasing the coverage of FrameNet, building FrameNets in other languages, and creating a system for querying a joint FrameNet-WordNet hierarchy.