On determining semantic similarity based on relationships of a combined thesaurus

• Published in: Automatic documentation and mathematical linguistics Vol. 50; no. 4; pp. 139 - 153
• Main Authors: Golitsyna, O. L., Maksimov, N. V., Fedorova, V. A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Allerton Press 01.07.2016; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Algorithms; Computer Science; Information Storage and Retrieval; Maximum principle; Searching; Semantics; Similarity; immanent relationships; contextual relationships; paradigmatic relationships; thesaurus; measure of semantic similarity; ontology; principle of coinciding maximums
• ISSN: 0005-1055; 1934-8371
• DOI: 10.3103/S0005105516040026

Problems of the use of thesauruses for fuzzy comparisons of conceptual patterns are considered. A measure of semantic similarity that can be calculated using hierarchical and association relationships of a thesaurus is proposed, as well as an algorithm to compile a semantic intersection of conceptual patterns based on the coinciding maximum principle. A massive of texts and conceptual search patterns of thesis papers was used for experimental studies, which proved that the use of the lexis of different subject fields of a multi-area thesaurus produced a more precise identification of sematic similarity. The power of the pattern intersection increased significantly through pairs of descriptors linked by the semantic similarity measure; however, the average degree of pairwise intersection only increased by 1–2%, which implies an insignificant “expansion” of a conceptual pattern as it is used as a search pattern in creating search-result outputs in automated search mechanisms.