Semantic representation of Korean numeral classifier and its ontology building for HLT applications

• Published in: Language Resources and Evaluation Vol. 42; no. 2; pp. 151 - 172
• Main Authors: Hwang, Soonhee, Yoon, Aesun, Kwon, Hyuk-Chul
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer 01.05.2008; Springer Netherlands; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Classification; Classifiers; Computational Linguistics; Computer Science; Construction; Dictionaries; Domain ontologies; Grammar; Hierarchies; Knowledge representation; Korean language; Language and Literature; Language translation; Lexical semantics; Linguistics; Natural language processing; Noun phrases; Nouns; Numbers; Numerals; Ontology; Semantic categories; Semantic relations; Semantics; Social Sciences; Test data; Words; Jeju Island; Classifier ontology; Natural language processing (NLP) techniques; Semantic representation; Ontological relations; Human language technology (HLT); Numeral classifier
• ISSN: 1574-020X; 1572-8412; 1574-0218
• DOI: 10.1007/s10579-007-9047-3

The complexity of Korean numeral classifiers demands semantic as well as computational approaches that employ natural language processing (NLP) techniques. The classifier is a universal linguistic device, having the two functions of quantifying and classifying nouns in noun phrase constructions. Many linguistic studies have focused on the fact that numeral classifiers afford decisive clues to categorizing nouns. However, few studies have dealt with the semantic categorization of classifiers and their semantic relations to the nouns they quantify and categorize in building ontologies. In this article, we propose the semantic recategorization of the Korean numeral classifiers in the context of classifier ontology based on large corpora and KorLex Noun 1.5 (Korean wordnet; Korean Lexical Semantic Network), considering its high applicability in the NLP domain. In particular, the classifier can be effectively used to predict the semantic characteristics of nouns and to process them appropriately in NLP. The major challenge is to make such semantic classification and the attendant NLP techniques efficient. Accordingly, a Korean numeral classifier ontology (KorLexClas 1.0), including semantic hierarchies and relations to nouns, was constructed.