The relation between ontologies and language is currently at the forefront of natural language processing (NLP). Ontologies, as widely used models in semantic technologies, have much in common with the lexicon. A lexicon organizes words as a conventional inventory of concepts, while an ontology formalizes concepts and their logical relations. A shared lexicon is the prerequisite for knowledge-sharing through language, and a shared ontology is the prerequisite for knowledge-sharing through information technology. In building models of language, computational linguists must be able to accurately map the relations between words and the concepts that they can be linked to. This book focuses on the technology involved in enabling integration between lexical resources and semantic technologies. It will be of interest to researchers and graduate students in NLP, computational linguistics, and knowledge engineering, as well as in semantics, psycholinguistics, lexicology and morphology/syntax.

Distributional semantics develops theories and methods to represent the meaning of natural language expressions, with vectors encoding their statistical distribution in linguistic contexts. It is at once a theoretical model to express meaning, a practical methodology to construct semantic representations, a computational framework for acquiring meaning from language data, and a cognitive hypothesis about the role of language usage in shaping meaning. This book aims to build a common understanding of the theoretical and methodological foundations of distributional semantics. Beginning with its historical origins, the text exemplifies how the distributional approach is implemented in distributional semantic models. The main types of computational models, including modern deep learning ones, are described and evaluated, demonstrating how various types of semantic issues are addressed by those models. Open problems and challenges are also analyzed. Students and researchers in natural language processing, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science will appreciate this book.

The relation between ontologies and language is currently at the forefront of natural language processing (NLP). Ontologies, as widely used models in semantic technologies, have much in common with the lexicon. A lexicon organizes words as a conventional inventory of concepts, while an ontology formalizes concepts and their logical relations. A shared lexicon is the prerequisite for knowledge-sharing through language, and a shared ontology is the prerequisite for knowledge-sharing through information technology. In building models of language, computational linguists must be able to accurately map the relations between words and the concepts that they can be linked to. This book focuses on the technology involved in enabling integration between lexical resources and semantic technologies. It will be of interest to researchers and graduate students in NLP, computational linguistics, and knowledge engineering, as well as in semantics, psycholinguistics, lexicology and morphology/syntax.