Types Of Semantic Relations Research Articles

Development of implicit processing of thematic and functional similarity relations during manipulable artifact object identification: Evidence from eye-tracking in the Visual World Paradigm

This study assessed the implicit processing development of three types of semantic relations during manipulable artifact identification. Thirteen adults and thirty-nine children (age 6, 8, and 10 years) participated. Fixation temporal dynamics were used to assess competition effects from thematic (e.g., wood), specific function (e.g., axe), and general function (e.g., knife) distractors during target identification (e.g., saw). Competition effects were analyzed depending on distractor type and age group. Developmental results demonstrate emergence of competition effects with general function distractors with age, whereas competition effects with thematic and specific function distractors were stable from 6. Findings highlight fined-grained development of similarity-based semantic mechanism implicit use during object processing from 6 to adulthood. They further suggest that complementarity-based mechanism is efficiently used during object semantic processing starting from 6 and likely involved in processing both thematic and specific function relations.

The Semantic Structure of English and German Compounds: Same or Different?

Previous work has revealed significant formal differences between English and German nominal compounds. This study extends the contrastive analysis of compounds to the semantic level. The empirical investigation is guided by two major questions: firstly, does the type of semantic relation between the constituents of compounds exert an influence on their English translations? Secondly, is there any difference in the range of idiomaticity covered by English and German compounds? The answer to both questions is in the negative. On the tests performed, English and German compounds do not differ semantically. This constitutes a notable form-meaning mismatch. This mismatch is argued to arise from the subordination of iconicity to freedom of expression. Moreover, the greater compound propensity in German compared to English cannot be put down to semantic effects. German leans towards uniform coding whereas English wavers between the compounding and the phrasal strategy. This competition is claimed to constrain compound use in English.

The effects of thematic relations on picture naming abilities across the lifespan

ABSTRACTA picture–word interference paradigm tracked patterns of activation during picture naming in 87 individuals (age range 17–80 years old). Distractor words were presented at stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of −200, −100, and 0 ms bearing a has a-, location, or no relationship to the picture. Analyses of group naming reaction times revealed significant facilitation effects for both semantic relation types for all age groups. Analyses of temporal patterns of activation revealed significant effects primarily at SOAs of −200 and −100 ms. These findings provide evidence that both thematic relations are particularly salient in how semantic knowledge is organized, and that the patterns of effects from these semantic relations remain the same as one ages.

Automatic extraction and visualization of semantic relations between medical entities from medicine instructions

Recent years have witnessed the rapid development and tremendous research interests in healthcare domain. The health and medical knowledge can be acquired from many sources, such as professional health providers, health community generated data and textual descriptions of medicines. This paper explores the classification and extraction of semantic relation between medical entities from the unstructured medicine Chinese instructions. In this paper, three kinds of textual features are extracted from medicine instruction according to the nature of natural language texts. And then, a support vector machine based classification model is proposed to categorize the semantic relations between medical entities into the corresponding semantic relation types. Finally, the extraction algorithm is utilized to obtain the semantic relation triples. This paper also visualizes the semantic relations between medical entities with relationship graph for their future processing. The experimental results show that the approach proposed in this paper is effective and efficient in the classification and extraction of semantic relations between medical entities.

Thematic relatedness production norms for 100 object concepts.

Knowledge of thematic relations is an area of increased interest in semantic memory research because it is crucial to many cognitive processes. One methodological issue that researchers face is how to identify pairs of thematically related concepts that are well-established in semantic memory for most people. In this article, we review existing methods of assessing thematic relatedness and provide thematic relatedness production norming data for 100 object concepts. In addition, 1,174 related concept pairs obtained from the production norms were classified as reflecting one of the five subtypes of relations: attributive, argument, coordinate, locative, and temporal. The database and methodology will be useful for researchers interested in the effects of thematic knowledge on language processing, analogical reasoning, similarity judgments, and memory. These data will also benefit researchers interested in investigating potential processing differences among the five types of semantic relations.

Investigating the flow of information during speaking: the impact of morpho-phonological, associative, and categorical picture distractors on picture naming.

In three experiments, participants named target pictures by means of German compound words (e.g., Gartenstuhl–garden chair), each accompanied by two different distractor pictures (e.g., lawn mower and swimming pool). Targets and distractor pictures were semantically related either associatively (garden chair and lawn mower) or by a shared semantic category (garden chair and wardrobe). Within each type of semantic relation, target and distractor pictures either shared morpho-phonological (word-form) information (Gartenstuhl with Gartenzwerg, garden gnome, and Gartenschlauch, garden hose) or not. A condition with two completely unrelated pictures served as baseline. Target naming was facilitated when distractor and target pictures were morpho-phonologically related. This is clear evidence for the activation of word-form information of distractor pictures. Effects were larger for associatively than for categorically related distractors and targets, which constitute evidence for lexical competition. Mere categorical relatedness, in the absence of morpho-phonological overlap, resulted in null effects (Experiments 1 and 2), and only speeded target naming when effects reflect only conceptual, but not lexical processing (Experiment 3). Given that distractor pictures activate their word forms, the data cannot be easily reconciled with discrete serial models. The results fit well with models that allow information to cascade forward from conceptual to word-form levels.

A Complex Network Approach to Distributional Semantic Models.

A number of studies on network analysis have focused on language networks based on free word association, which reflects human lexical knowledge, and have demonstrated the small-world and scale-free properties in the word association network. Nevertheless, there have been very few attempts at applying network analysis to distributional semantic models, despite the fact that these models have been studied extensively as computational or cognitive models of human lexical knowledge. In this paper, we analyze three network properties, namely, small-world, scale-free, and hierarchical properties, of semantic networks created by distributional semantic models. We demonstrate that the created networks generally exhibit the same properties as word association networks. In particular, we show that the distribution of the number of connections in these networks follows the truncated power law, which is also observed in an association network. This indicates that distributional semantic models can provide a plausible model of lexical knowledge. Additionally, the observed differences in the network properties of various implementations of distributional semantic models are consistently explained or predicted by considering the intrinsic semantic features of a word-context matrix and the functions of matrix weighting and smoothing. Furthermore, to simulate a semantic network with the observed network properties, we propose a new growing network model based on the model of Steyvers and Tenenbaum. The idea underlying the proposed model is that both preferential and random attachments are required to reflect different types of semantic relations in network growth process. We demonstrate that this model provides a better explanation of network behaviors generated by distributional semantic models.

A saw is first identified as an object used on wood: ERP evidence for temporal differences between Thematic and Functional similarity relations

The role of functional and motor information in manipulable artifact object semantic organization is still poorly understood. In particular, several types of semantic relations involving object functional knowledge may be distinguished. Functional similarity relations group objects with similar functions at relatively specific (e.g. saw–axe, both used to cut wood) or general (saw–knife, both used to cut) levels. Thematic relations group objects based on their complementarity in events (saw used upon/with wood). Recent eye-tracking data showed distinct temporal time courses for the different semantic relations, with fastest processing of thematic relations and slowest processing of general function similarity relations. Behavioral data suggest the involvement of distinct cognitive mechanisms in manipulable artifact object semantic processing. The aim of the present study was to assess the neural correlates of thematic, and specific and general function similarity relation processing. Specifically, we investigated whether time course differences between semantic relations could be highlighted at the neurophysiological level. We used a protocol combining semantic priming with electroencephalography, and manipulated the type of semantic relation and the duration of the interval between prime and target objects. Two consistent and complementary results were shown. On N1 and P3 components, semantic priming was observed for thematic relations only. On N400 component, the type of semantic relation interacted with interval duration, and semantic priming was visible for all 3 relations after the longest interval only. Results revealed graded processing time courses for thematic, specific function similarity, and general function similarity relations at the neural level, and further indicate that thematic relations impact object processing during the early stages of object recognition. Findings suggest a hierarchical organization of three types of semantic relations based on functional knowledge. The parallel between semantic relations involving manipulable artifact objects and levels of action representations is discussed.

The Nature and Neural Correlates of Semantic Association versus Conceptual Similarity.

The ability to represent concepts and the relationships between them is critical to human cognition. How does the brain code relationships between items that share basic conceptual properties (e.g., dog and wolf) while simultaneously representing associative links between dissimilar items that co-occur in particular contexts (e.g., dog and bone)? To clarify the neural bases of these semantic components in neurologically intact participants, both types of semantic relationship were investigated in an fMRI study optimized for anterior temporal lobe (ATL) coverage. The clear principal finding was that the same core semantic network (ATL, superior temporal sulcus, ventral prefrontal cortex) was equivalently engaged when participants made semantic judgments on the basis of association or conceptual similarity. Direct comparisons revealed small, weaker differences for conceptual similarity > associative decisions (e.g., inferior prefrontal cortex) and associative > conceptual similarity (e.g., ventral parietal cortex) which appear to reflect graded differences in task difficulty. Indeed, once reaction time was entered as a covariate into the analysis, no associative versus category differences remained. The paper concludes with a discussion of how categorical/feature-based and associative relationships might be represented within a single, unified semantic system.

Teaching Graphic Symbol Combinations to Children with Limited Speech During Shared Story Reading

The aim of this study was to determine the effect of an intervention strategy on the production of graphic symbol combinations in children with limited speech. Four children between the ages of 6;5 and 10;8 (years;months) with limited speech participated in the study. A single-subject, multiple probe design across three different types of semantic relations was used. Generalization to untrained exemplars was also monitored. Results were mixed across the four participants: two participants learned to combine symbols across different types of relations, maintained these skills post intervention, and generalized their skills to untrained combinations; and two participants showed less consistent evidence of learning. The effects, as measured during structured probes, were strong for one participant, moderate for another, and inconclusive for the two others. Responses during shared story reading suggested that the measurement probes might have underestimated participants’ ability to combine symbols.

The role of the precuneus in metaphor comprehension: evidence from an fMRI study in people with schizophrenia and healthy participants.

Comprehension of conventional and novel metaphors involves traditional language-related cortical regions as well as non-language related regions. While semantic processing is crucial for understanding metaphors, it is not sufficient. Recently the precuneus has been identified as a region that mediates complex and highly integrated tasks, including retrieval of episodic memory and mental imagery. Although the understanding of non-literal language is relatively easy for healthy individuals, people with schizophrenia exhibit deficits in this domain. The present study aims to examine whether people with schizophrenia differentially recruit the precuneus, extending to the superior parietal (SP) cortex (SPL), to support their deficit in metaphor comprehension. We also examine interregional associations between the precuneus/SPL and language-related brain regions. Twelve people with schizophrenia and twelve healthy controls were scanned while silently reading literal word pairs, conventional metaphors, and novel metaphors. People with schizophrenia showed reduced comprehension of both conventional and novel metaphors. Analysis of functional connectivity found that the correlations between activation in the left precuneus/SPL and activation in the left posterior superior temporal sulcus (PSTS) were significant for both literal word pairs and novel metaphors, and significant correlations were found between activation in the right precuneus/SPL and activation in the right PSTS for the three types of semantic relations. These results were found in the schizophrenia group alone. Furthermore, relative to controls, people with schizophrenia demonstrated increased activation in the right precuneus/SPL. Our results may suggest that individuals with schizophrenia use mental imagery to support comprehension of both literal and metaphoric language. In particular, our findings indicate over-integration of language and non-language brain regions during more effortful processes of novel metaphor comprehension.

구조적 학술용어사전 데이터베이스 구축에 있어서 용어의 의미관계 형성에 영향을 미치는 요인에 관한 연구

The purpose of this study is to find factors to affect on the formation of semantic relation from terminology and what is to be affected by these factors to build the database scheme of terminology dictionary by a structural definition. In this research, 826,905 keywords of 88,874 social science articles and 985,580 keywords of 125,046 humanities science articles in the KCI journals from 2007 to 2011 were collected. From collected data, subject complexity, structural hole, term frequency, occurrence pattern and an effect between the number of nodes and the number of patterns which were derived from the semantic relation of linked terms of established ‘STNet’ System were analyzed. The summarized results from analyzed data and network patterns are as follows. Betweenness Centrality, term frequency, and effective size affect the numbers of semantic relation node. Among these factors, betweenness centrality was the most effective and effective size. But term frequency was the least effective. Betweenness Centrality, term frequency, and effective size affect the numbers of semantic relation type. Term frequency is the most effective. Therefore, when building a terminology dictionary, factors of betweenness centrality, term frequency, effective size, and complexity of subject are needed to select term. As a result, these factors can be expected to improve the quality of terminology dictionary. 키워드: 용어사전, 학술용어, 네트워크분석, 지적구조 Glossary, Terminology, Network Analysis, Intellectual Structure * ** 이 논문은 성균관대학교 대학원 박사학위 논문을 축약.정리한 것임. 성균관대학교 정보관리연구소 선임연구원(freesson@gmail.com) 논문접수일자: 2014년 4월 16일 최초심사일자: 2014년 5월 7일 게재확정일자: 2014년 5월 22일 한국문헌정보학회지, 48(2): 353-378, 2014. [http://dx.doi.org/10.4275/KSLIS.2014.48.2.353] 354 한국문헌정보학회지 제48권 제2호 2014

Looking for structure: Is the two-word stage of language development in apes and human children the same or different?

Previously published corpora of two-word utterances by three chimpanzees and three human children were compared to determine whether, as has been claimed, apes possess the same basic syntactic and semantic capacities as 2-year old children. Some similarities were observed in the type of semantic relations expressed by the two groups; however, marked contrasts were also uncovered. With respect to the major syntactic mechanism displayed in two-word child language, namely word order, statistically significant differences were found in all three comparisons that were tested. These results indicate that chimpanzees do not exhibit the linguistic capacities of 2-year old children.

A comparison of features and categorical cues to improve naming abilities in aphasia

Background: Evidence from the picture–word interference literature reveals that picture–word pairs bearing a non-categorical relationship (e.g., RING—expensive) will facilitate naming more than picture–word pairs bearing a categorical relationship (e.g., BRACELET—earrings). It is not known whether these differential effects would be found within a naming treatment paradigm for aphasia; however, if it is the case that one type of semantic relations will yield more robust treatment effects than another, this would provide a more efficient and effective delivery of treatment. Moreover, since semantic errors are commonly produced by individuals with aphasia, an approach which helps strengthen the semantic network will, in turn, strengthen lexical retrieval and access processes.Aim: The aim of the study was to compare a features condition, or a condition in which attributes were used, to a categorical condition, or a condition in which categorical members were used to see which would yield greater naming improvements in aphasia.Methods & Procedures: Eight individuals with aphasia were recruited for the study. A multiple-baseline design across behaviours with a crossover component was used. A categorical–features sequence was used in four participants, and a features–categorical sequence was used in four other participants. Accuracy of correct naming was calculated to determine improvements in treatment. The types of naming errors produced by individuals with positive treatment effects in the trained condition were compared to the types of naming errors produced in the control condition.Outcome & Results: A range of small to large treatment effect sizes was obtained in six of the eight participants when considering both treated conditions. However, no overwhelming advantage was found for either condition. Analyses of naming error patterns indicated increased lexical access and retrieval of the targeted picture name.Conclusions: Approaches that use cues focusing either on categorical membership or attributes will facilitate naming abilities in individuals with aphasia whether naming per cent accuracy is calculated or naming error types are tallied. However, the current results did not indicate an overwhelming advantage in using one or the other condition. Future studies should specify the type of features used (e.g., associative cues, thematic cues or perceptual cues) to determine whether such a differentiation will yield clearer differential treatment effects.

Homonymy, Polysemy and Zero Derivation in the English-Macedonian Context

Since the notions of homonymy, polysemy and zero derivation share some characteristics that make them similar, while they are independent language phenomena that linguistically distinguish from one another; this paper aims to explain the features of these three concepts, by defining them individually, giving their similarities, contrasting the two types of semantic relation: homonymy and polysemy on one side, and the word formation process of zero derivation on the other. The analysis attempts to explain the reason for the confusion they cause due to the same form of the word, by distinctly clarifying the semantic moment behind the concerned lexemes. In addition to the meaning, and regarding zero derivation, the lexical category is taken as a crucial factor because in all cases the form is the same, the words can belong to the same word class, but have related meanings when talking about polysemy, completely different meanings when homonymy is in question, and expanded meaning in zero derivation, while in this word formation process on which the analysis is particularly focused, the change of the word class is obligatory. The existence of these concepts in linguistics is illustrated with examples from English and from Macedonian, taken as language structures where the three processes are equally present. The semantic transfer – the transfer of the meaning between the lexemes is used as a method in the analysis of these processes. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n3p77

Semantic relations differentially impact associative recognition memory: Electrophysiological evidence

Though associative recognition memory is thought to rely primarily on recollection, recent research indicates that familiarity might also make a substantial contribution when to-be-learned items are integrated into a coherent structure by means of an existing semantic relation. It remains unclear how different types of semantic relations, such as categorical (e.g., dancer–singer) and thematic (e.g., dancer–stage) relations might affect associative recognition, however. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), we addressed this question by manipulating the type of semantic link between paired words in an associative recognition memory experiment. An early midfrontal old/new effect, typically linked to familiarity, was observed across the relation types. In contrast, a robust left parietal old/new effect was found in the categorical condition only, suggesting a clear contribution of recollection to associative recognition for this kind of pairs. One interpretation of this pattern is that familiarity was sufficiently diagnostic for associative recognition of thematic relations, which could result from the integrative nature of the thematic relatedness compared to the similarity-based nature of categorical pairs. The present study suggests that the extent to which recollection and familiarity are involved in associative recognition is at least in part determined by the properties of semantic relations between the paired associates.

Extracção de Relações Semânticas de Textos em Português Explorando a DBpédia e a Wikipédia

The identification of semantic relationships, as expressed between named entities in text, is an important step for extracting knowledge from large document collections, such as the Web. Previous works have addressed this task for the English language through supervised learning techniques for automatic classification. The current state of the art involves the use of learning methods based on string kernels. However, such approaches require manually annotated training data for each type of semantic relationship, and have scalability problems when tens or hundreds of different types of relationships have to be extracted. This article discusses an approach for distantly supervised relation extraction over texts written in the Portuguese language, which uses an efficient technique for measuring similarity between relation instances, based on minwise hashing and on locality sensitive hashing. In the proposed method, the training examples are automatically collected from Wikipedia, corresponding to sentences that express semantic relationships between pairs of entities extracted from DBPedia. These examples are represented as sets of character quadgrams and other representative elements. The sets are indexed in a data structure that implements the idea of locality-sensitive hashing. To check which semantic relationship is expressed between a given pair of entities referenced in a sentence, the most similar training examples are searched, based on an approximation to the Jaccard coefficient, obtained through min-hashing. The relation class is assigned with basis on the weighted votes of the most similar examples. Tests with a dataset from Wikipedia validate the suitability of the proposed method, showing, for instance, that the method is able to extract 10 different types of semantic relations, 8 of them corresponding to asymmetric relations, with an average score of 55.6%, measured in terms of F1.

Beyond search: Retrieving complete tuples from a text-database

A common task of Web users is querying structured information from Web pages. For realizing this interesting scenario we propose a novel query processor for systematically discovering instances of semantic relations in Web search results and joining these relation instances into complex result tuples with conjunctive queries. Our query processor transforms a structured user query into keyword queries that are submitted to a search engine, forwards search results to a relation extractor, and then combines relations into complex result tuples. The processor automatically learns discriminative and effective keywords for different types of semantic relations. Thereby, our query processor leverages the index of a search engine to query potentially billions of pages. Unfortunately, relation extractors may fail to return a relation for a result tuple. Moreover, user defined data sources may not return at least k complete result tuples. Therefore we propose an adaptive routing model based on information theory for retrieving missing attributes of incomplete result tuples. The model determines the most promising next incomplete tuple and attribute type for returning any-k complete result tuples at any point during the query execution process. We report a thorough experimental evaluation over multiple relation extractors. Our query processor returns complete result tuples while processing only very few Web pages.

Establishing semantic interoperability of biomedical metadata registries using extended semantic relationships.

Achieving semantic interoperability is critical for biomedical data sharing between individuals, organizations and systems. The ISO/IEC 11179 MetaData Registry (MDR) standard has been recognized as one of the solutions for this purpose. The standard model, however, is limited. Representing concepts consist of two or more values, for instance, are not allowed including blood pressure with systolic and diastolic values. We addressed the structural limitations of ISO/IEC 11179 by an integrated metadata object model in our previous research. In the present study, we introduce semantic extensions for the model by defining three new types of semantic relationships; dependency, composite and variable relationships. To evaluate our extensions in a real world setting, we measured the efficiency of metadata reduction by means of mapping to existing others. We extracted metadata from the College of American Pathologist Cancer Protocols and then evaluated our extensions. With no semantic loss, one third of the extracted metadata could be successfully eliminated, suggesting better strategy for implementing clinical MDRs with improved efficiency and utility.

Szempontok a magyar névtani terminológia megítéléséhez

Hungarian onomastic literature – inevitably – often refers to or discusses problems relating to the use of technical terms. Such attention, however, is directed primarily to some onomastic sub-field or to particular terms, and the general questions and problems of terminology are not touched upon. The present study intends to raise some of these questions and problems by surveying certain characteristics as well as the present situation of Hungarian onomastic terminology. Topics discussed include: 1. the main types of semantic relations among terms (synonymy, homonymy, polysemy); 2. the use of terms of international or of Hungarian origin; 3. problems concerning the interpretation of terms; 4. different contexts for use of terms and the difficulties arising from this; 5. lack of terms. Each topic is introduced and presented with the help of examples taken from Hungarian onomastic and onomastics-related literature.