Meaning Estimation Scheme of Alphabetical Abbreviations using Conceptualization of Words and Wikipedia

Abstract

It is believed that Japan is open to loanwords, and they are often used in daily activities. Particularly, in English, scenes using foreign language notation are increasing. In addition, alphabetical abbreviations, which comprise initials of each English word, are used. However, polysemy is a major concern for the alphabetical abbreviations. In this paper, we propose a scheme to estimate the meaning of an alphabetical abbreviation. The proposed scheme considers the meaning estimation of an alphabetical abbreviation as the meaning estimation of an unknown word. This scheme uses the concept base, and, Calculation of Degree of Association or Earth Mover’s Distance. The scheme allows for the conceptualization of a word and the evaluation of semasiological association between conceptualized words. In addition, Wikipedia is used to complement the lack of information due to alphabetical abbreviations. This paper makes use of 129 articles to evaluate the proposed scheme. The experiments showed that the accuracy of the proposed scheme was nearly 80% and that the scheme was more effective than other schemes.