An Attempt to Automatic Thesaurus Construction from an Ordinary Japanese Language Dictionary

How to obta in h i e r a r ch i ca l r e l a t i o n s ( e . g , superord ina te -hyponym relation, synonym r e l a t i o n ) is one of the most important problems for thesaurus cons t ruc t ion , A p i lo t system for ex t r ac t ing these r e l a t i o n s au tomat ica l ly from an ordinary Japanese language d i c t i ona ry (Shinmeikai Kokugojiten, published hy Sansei-do, in machine readable form) i s given. The f e a t u r e s of the definition sentences in the d i c t iona ry , the mechanical ex t r ac t i on of the h i e r a r ch i ca l r e l a t i o n s and the es t ima t ion of the r e s u l t s are d i scussed .