Generating and evaluating domain-oriented multi-word terms from texts

Abstract

It is generally agreed that natural language database query systems need to be tailored for each application in which they are used. This process, often called customization, involves, among other things, specification of the domain vocabulary and the grammatical properties of that vocabulary. In a previous paper, techniques for automatically generating domain vocabularies from large text collections were discussed. This paper is a continuation of that line of research, focusing on the problem of generating multi-word vocabulary terms (specifically pairs). It also discusses some of the statistical issues associated with word co-occurrences likely to be of use in a natural language interface for the application in question. Most importantly, an attempt is made to provide a more objective evaluation of the selection procedures used. Absent substantial experimentation with subjects using a working query system, all evaluation is necessarily subjective. This paper uses a surrogate for experimentation by relying on pre-existing dictionaries as indicators of domain relevance.