Linguistic Knowledge and Word Sense Disambiguation

pd The work in this thesis has been carried out under the auspices of the Beha-vioral and Cognitive Neurosciences (BCN) research school, Groningen, and has been part of the Pionier project Algorithms for Linguistic Processing, supported by grant number 220-70-001 from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). Acknowledgements As with every PhD project, even though there is but one author on the front cover, many different people have implicitly contributed to the book you now have in front of you. They have encouraged and helped me before and during my PhD position at the University of Groningen and I would like to use this opportunity to thank them. It all started with a few of my University teachers who were involved in my MA thesis project: Georges Lüdi and Pius ten Hacken at the University of Basel, and Ulrich Heid at the Institut für Maschinelle Sprachverarbeitung in Stuttgart. Their feedback and encouragement made me believe in my talents as a researcher and helped me decide to continue my education with a PhD. I am especially grateful to my supervisors, John Nerbonne and Gertjan van Noord. Without all their support, scrupulous (and fast!) reading and critical comments this thesis would not be what it now is. I would also like to thank the members of my reading committee, for their valuable comments and suggestions. Among the people who have made me feel welcome and at home in Groningen during the last four and a half years, I would like to mention my colleagues at the Alfa Informatica corridor. Stasinos Konstantopoulos, Ivelin Stoianov and Wouter Jansen were a great " welcoming committee " , always ready to go for coffee, a beer or a movie. Special thanks go to my (current and past) office mates Leonoor van der Beek, for discussions on subjects ranging from linguistic examples, translations to various languages, and L A T E X questions to traveling, music and recipes (tested during the AiO etentjes with Leonoor, Menno and Robbert). I would also like to express my gratitude to everyone involved in the Pionier project for listening to (unfinished) ideas and giving valuable comments on presentations: Gertjan am especially indebted to Rob v vi for patiently explaining his maximum entropy package to me. I would also like to thank Leonie Bosveld-de Smet for the many moments we have spent discussing life and everything related to it, and the …