Towards a Self-Extending Lexicon

The problem of manual ly modifying the lexicon appears with any na tura l language processing program. Ideally, a program should be able to acquire new lexieal entries from context, the way people learn. We address the problem of acquiring entire phrases, specifically Jigurative phr~es, through augment ing a phr~al lezico~ Facilitating such a self-extending lexicon involves (a) disambiguation~se|ection of the intended phrase from a set of matching phrases, (b) robust parsin~-comprehension of par t ia l ly-matching phrases, and (c) error analysis---use of errors in forming hypotheses about new phrases. We have designed and implemented a program called RINA which uses demons to implement funetional-~rammar principles. RINA receives new figurative phrases in context and through the application of a sequence of failure-driven rules, creates and refines both the pa t te rns and the concepts which hold syntact ic and semantic information about phrases. David vs. Goliath