Lexical Cohesion Computed by Thesaural Relations as an Indicator of the Structure of Text

In text, lexical cohesion is the result of chains of related words that contribute to the continuity of lexical meaning. These lexical chains are a direct result of units of text being "about the same thing," and finding text structure involves finding units of text that are about the same thing. Hence, computing the chains is useful, since they will have a correspondence to the structure of the text. Determining the structure of text is an essential step in determining the deep meaning of the text. In this paper, a thesaurus is used as the major knowledge base for computing lexical chains. Correspondences between lexical chains and structural elements are shown to exist. Since the lexical chains are computable, and exist in non-domain-specific text, they provide a valuable indicator of text structure. The lexical chains also provide a semantic context for interpreting words, concepts, and sentences.