A Rank-based Distance Measure to Detect Polysemy and to Determine Salient Vector-Space Features for German Prepositions

This paper addresses vector space models of prepositions, a notoriously ambiguous word class. We propose a rank-based distance measure to explore the vector-spatial properties of the ambiguous objects, focusing on two research tasks: (i) to distinguish polysemous from monosemous prepositions in vector space; and (ii) to determine salient vector-space features for a classification of preposition senses. The rank-based measure predicts the polysemy vs. monosemy of prepositions with a precision of up to 88%, and suggests preposition-subcategorised nouns as more salient preposition features than preposition-subcategorising verbs.