Ambiguity resolution and the retrieval of idioms: two approaches

When an idiomatic expression is encountered during natural language processing, the ambiguity between its idiomatic and non-idiomatic meaning has to be resolved. Rather than including both meanings in further processing, a conventionality-principle could be applied. This results in best-first processing of the idiomatic analysis. Two models are discussed fot the lexical representation of idioms. One extends the notion continuation class from two-level morphology, the other is a localist, connectionist model. The connectionist model has an important advantage over the continuation class model: the conventionality principle follows naturally from the architecture of the connectionist model.

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