Abstract
One of the least understood aspects of lexical choice in Natural Language Generation is choosing between near-synonyms. Previous studies of this issue, such as Edmonds and Hirst [4], have focused on semantic differences between near-synonyms, as analysed by lexicographers. Our empirical analysis of near-synonym choice in weather forecasts, however, suggests that other factors are probably more important than semantic differences. These include preferences and idiosyncrasies of individual authors; collocation; variation of lexical usage; and position of a lexeme in a text. Our analysis also suggests that when semantic differences do influence near-synonym choice, they may do so in an author-dependent manner. Thus, at least in our domain, ‘context’ (including author) seems to be more important than semantics when choosing between near-synonyms.
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Reiter, E., Sripada, S. (2004). Contextual Influences on Near-Synonym Choice. In: Belz, A., Evans, R., Piwek, P. (eds) Natural Language Generation. INLG 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 3123. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-27823-8_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-27823-8_17
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