Distributional Semantics

This book provides a comprehensive foundation for the use of distributional methods in computational modeling of meaning.

Alessandro Lenci (Author), Magnus Sahlgren (Author)

9781107004290, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 21 September 2023

448 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 3 cm, 0.79 kg

'With this book, Lenci and Sahlgren promote the dissemination of distributional semantics. These studies contribute, on the one hand, to establishing contact with other theories of meaning representation and, on the other, to comparing them with existing ones. This enriches the landscape of semantics and helps us better understand it, as it offers different perspectives for approaching the subject in question. The growing relevance of NLP and AI today finds perfect application in these theories, which serves to confirm the natural progress of semantic theories.' Paloma Sánchez Hernández, International Journal of Ibero-American Linguistics

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.

Preface
Part I. Theory: 1. From usage to meaning: the foundations of distributional semantics
2. Distributional representations
Part II. Models: 3. Distributional semantic models
4. Matrix models
5. Random encoding models
Part III. Practice: 7. Evaluation of distributional semantic models
8. Distributional semantics and the lexicon
9 Distributional semantics beyond the lexicon
10. Conclusions and Outlook
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Computational linguistics [CFX]