Alignment of Similar Concepts in Different Electronic Dictionaries and Its Applications

Abstract

We propose a method to compare and align concepts in different hierarchically structured conceptual systems that are provided as parts of electronic dictionaries. We define the similarity of two concepts in terms of word sets associated with them, and present an effective algorithm to obtain the most similar concept set to a given concept. Using this method, we attempt to align the Goi-Taikei semantic system with the EDR conceptual system, and demonstrate its validity. We also discuss applications of such a conceptual alignment to semantic analysis of sentences.