1887
image of Discovering hyponymic knowledge patterns in English

Abstract

Abstract

Identifying hyponymy is essential in terminology work. This article addresses the lack of a comprehensive inventory of hyponymic knowledge patterns (KPs) in English by presenting a robust methodology for their collection. Drawing on six complementary strategies — literature review, machine translation, parallel corpora, human translation, bootstrapping, and generative artificial intelligence — the study identified and validated 110 distinct English hyponymic patterns, many of which had not been previously documented. These patterns will serve to update the English version of the EcoLexicon Semantic Sketch Grammar (ESSG-en), a KP-based tool for extracting semantic relations from corpora in Sketch Engine. The findings highlight the strengths and limitations of each strategy and underscore the value of combining methods to achieve coverage. Ultimately, this research fills a significant gap by delivering the most extensive list of English hyponymic patterns to date.

Available under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/term.25022.san
2025-10-14
2025-11-13
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

/deliver/fulltext/10.1075/term.25022.san/term.25022.san.html?itemId=/content/journals/10.1075/term.25022.san&mimeType=html&fmt=ahah

References

  1. Ahmad, Khurshid, and Heather Fulford
    1992 “Knowledge Processing: 4. Semantic Relations and Their Use in Elaborating Terminology.” InComputing Sciences Report CS–92–07. University of Surrey.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Aldine, Hamad Issa Alaa
    2020 “Contributions to Hypernym Patterns Representation and Learning Based on Dependency Parsing and Sequential Pattern Mining.” PhD Thesis, Université de Bretagne Sud.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Aussenac-Gilles, Nathalie, and Anne Condamines
    2012 “Variation and Semantic Relation Interpretation: Linguistic and Processing Issues.” 10th Terminology and Knowledge Engineering Conference (TKE 2012), –.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Aussenac-Gilles, Nathalie, and Marie-Paule Jacques
    2008 “Designing and Evaluating Patterns for Relation Acquisition from Texts with Caméléon.” Terminology (): –. 10.1075/term.14.1.04aus
    https://doi.org/10.1075/term.14.1.04aus [Google Scholar]
  5. Barrière, Caroline
    2004a “Building a Concept Hierarchy from Corpus Analysis.” Terminology (): –. 10.1075/term.10.2.05bar
    https://doi.org/10.1075/term.10.2.05bar [Google Scholar]
  6. 2004b “Knowledge-Rich Contexts Discovery.” Seventeenth Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI’2004) (London, Canada) : –. 10.1007/978‑3‑540‑24840‑8_14
    https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24840-8_14 [Google Scholar]
  7. Barrière, Caroline, and Akakpo Agbago
    2006 “TerminoWeb: A Software Environment for Term Study in Rich Contexts.” Proceedings of the International Conference on Terminology, Standardisation and Technology Transfer (TSTT 2006), –.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Barsalou, Lawrence W.
    2010 “Ad Hoc Categories.” InThe Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Language Sciences, edited byPatrick Colm Hogan. Cambridge University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Bernier-Colborne, Gabriel, and Caroline Barrière
    2018 “CRIM at SemEval-2018 Task 9: A Hybrid Approach to Hypernym Discovery Ere.” Proceedings of the 12th International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation, –. 10.18653/v1/S18‑1116
    https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/S18-1116 [Google Scholar]
  10. Bertels, Ann
    2022 “Terminology and Distributional Analysis of Corpora.” InTheoretical Perspectives on Terminology: Explaining Terms, Concepts and Specialized Knowledge, edited byPamela Faber and Marie-Claude L’Homme. Terminology and Lexicography Research and Practice 23. John Benjamins. 10.1075/tlrp.23.14ber
    https://doi.org/10.1075/tlrp.23.14ber [Google Scholar]
  11. Bowden, Paul R., Peter Halstead, and Tony G. Rose
    1996 “Extracting Conceptual Knowledge from Text Using Explicit Relation Markers.” InAdvances in Knowledge Acquisition, Proceedings of the 9th European Knowledge Acquisition Workshop, EKAW’96, edited byJaime G. Carbonell, Jörg Siekmann, G. Goos, J. Hartmanis, and J. Leeuwen, vol., edited byNigel Shadbolt, Kieron O’Hara, and Guus Schreiber. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. 10.1007/3‑540‑61273‑4_10
    https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-61273-4_10 [Google Scholar]
  12. Bowker, Lynne
    1996 “Learning from Cognitive Science: Developing a New Approach to Classification in Terminology.” InEURALEX ’96 Proceedings, edited byMartin Gellerstam, Jerker Järborg, Sven-Göran Malmgren, Kerstin Norén, Lena Rogström, and Catarina Röjder Papmehl. EURALEX.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Cimiano, Philipp, Aleksander Pivk, Lars Schmidt-Thieme, and Steffen Staab
    2005 “Learning Taxonomic Relations from Heterogeneous Sources of Evidence.” InOntology Learning from Text: Methods, Evaluation and Applications, byPaul Buitelaar, Philipp Cimiano, and Bernardo Magnini, vol.. IOS Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Cohen, Trevor, and Dominic Widdows
    2009 “Empirical Distributional Semantics: Methods and Biomedical Applications.” Journal of Biomedical Informatics (): –. 10.1016/j.jbi.2009.02.002
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbi.2009.02.002 [Google Scholar]
  15. Condamines, Anne
    2000 “‘Chez’ dans un corpus de sciences naturelles : un marqueur de relation méronymique?” Cahiers de lexicologie (): –.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. 2002 “Corpus Analysis and Conceptual Relation Patterns.” Terminology (): –. 10.1075/term.8.1.07con
    https://doi.org/10.1075/term.8.1.07con [Google Scholar]
  17. 2008 “Taking Genre into Account When Analysing Conceptual Relation Patterns.” Corpora (): –. 10.3366/E1749503208000129
    https://doi.org/10.3366/E1749503208000129 [Google Scholar]
  18. 2017 “Terminological Knowledge Bases.” InThe Routledge Handbook of Lexicography, edited byPedro A. Fuertes-Olivera. Routledge. 10.4324/9781315104942‑22
    https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315104942-22 [Google Scholar]
  19. 2022 “How the Notion of ‘Knowledge Rich Context’ Can Be Characterized Today.” Frontiers in Communication. 10.3389/fcomm.2022.824711
    https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2022.824711 [Google Scholar]
  20. Condamines, Anne, and Josette Rebeyrolle
    2001 “Searching for and Identifying Conceptual Relationships via a Corpus-Based Approach to a Terminological Knowledge Base (CTKB).” InRecent Advances in Computational Terminology, edited byDidier Bourigault, Christian Jacquemin, and Marie-Claude L’Homme. Natural Language Processing 2. 10.1075/nlp.2.07con
    https://doi.org/10.1075/nlp.2.07con [Google Scholar]
  21. Drouin, Patrick
    2010 “Extracting a Bilingual Transdisciplinary Scientific Lexicon.” IneLexicography in the 21st Century: New Challenges, New Applications, edited bySylviane Granger and Magali Paquot. Presses Universitaires de Louvain.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Evans, Vyvyan
    2019Cognitive Linguistics: A Complete Guide. Edinburgh University Press. 10.1515/9781474405232
    https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474405232 [Google Scholar]
  23. Faber, Pamela, Pilar León-Araúz, and Juan Antonio Prieto Velasco
    2009 “Semantic Relations, Dynamicity, and Terminological Knowledge Bases.” Current Issues in Language Studies: –.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Flowerdew, J.
    1992 “Definitions in Science Lectures.” Applied Linguistics (): –. 10.1093/applin/13.2.202
    https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/13.2.202 [Google Scholar]
  25. Gillam, Lee, Mariam Tariq, and Khurshid Ahmad
    2005 “Terminology and the Construction of Ontology.” Terminology (): –. 10.1075/term.11.1.04gil
    https://doi.org/10.1075/term.11.1.04gil [Google Scholar]
  26. Halskov, Jakob, and Caroline Barrière
    2008 “Web-Based Extraction of Semantic Relation Instances for Terminology Work.” Terminology (): –. 10.1075/term.14.1.03hal
    https://doi.org/10.1075/term.14.1.03hal [Google Scholar]
  27. Hearst, Marti A.
    1992 “Automatic Acquisition of Hyponyms from Large Text Corpora.” Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING’92): –. 10.3115/992133.992154
    https://doi.org/10.3115/992133.992154 [Google Scholar]
  28. Jakubíček, Miloš, Adam Kilgarriff, Diana McCarthy, and Pavel Rychlý
    2010 “Fast Syntactic Searching in Very Large Corpora for Many Languages.” Proceedings of the 24th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation, –.
    [Google Scholar]
  29. Kabir, Md. Ahsanul, Tyler Phillips, Xiao Luo, and Mohammad Al Hasan
    2023 “ASPER: Attention-Based Approach to Extract Syntactic Patterns Denoting Semantic Relations in Sentential Context.” Natural Language Processing Journal. 10.1016/j.nlp.2023.100011
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nlp.2023.100011 [Google Scholar]
  30. Kilgarriff, Adam, Vít Baisa, Jan Bušta,
    2014 “The Sketch Engine: Ten Years On.” Lexicography (): –. 10.1007/s40607‑014‑0009‑9
    https://doi.org/10.1007/s40607-014-0009-9 [Google Scholar]
  31. Lakoff, George
    1987Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. University of Chicago Press. 10.7208/chicago/9780226471013.001.0001
    https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226471013.001.0001 [Google Scholar]
  32. Laurence, Stephen, and Eric Margolis
    1999 “Concepts and Cognitive Science.” InConcepts: Core Readings, edited byEric Margolis and Stephen Laurence. MIT Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  33. Lefeuvre, Luce, Kevin Coustot, Anne Condamines, and Josette Rebeyrolle
    2017MAR-REL : Liste de candidats-marqueurs français pour les relations d’hyperonymie, de méronymie et de cause. CLLE-ERSS.
    [Google Scholar]
  34. Lenci, Alessandro
    2018 “Distributional Models of Word Meaning.” Annual Review of Linguistics: –. 10.1146/annurev‑linguistics‑030514‑125254
    https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-030514-125254 [Google Scholar]
  35. León-Araúz, Pilar, and Pamela Faber
    2010 “Natural and Contextual Constraints for Domain-Specific Relations.” InProceedings of the Workshop Semantic Relations. Theory and Applications, edited byVerginica Barbu Mititelu, Viktor Pekar, and Eduard Barbu. Valletta.
    [Google Scholar]
  36. León-Araúz, Pilar, and Antonio San Martín
    2018 “The EcoLexicon Semantic Sketch Grammar: From Knowledge Patterns to Word Sketches.” InProceedings of the LREC 2018 Workshop “Globalex 2018 — Lexicography & WordNets,”edited byIlan Kerneman and Simon Krek. Globalex.
    [Google Scholar]
  37. León-Araúz, Pilar, Antonio San Martín, and Pamela Faber
    2016 “Pattern-Based Word Sketches for the Extraction of Semantic Relations.” InProceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Computational Terminology, edited byPatrick Drouin, Natalia Grabar, Thierry Hamon, Kyo Kageura, and Koichi Takeuchi. Osaka.
    [Google Scholar]
  38. Lezama-Sánchez, Ana Laura, Mireya Tovar Vidal, and José A. Reyes-Ortiz
    2022 “An Approach Based on Semantic Relationship Embeddings for Text Classification.” Mathematics (): . 10.3390/math10214161
    https://doi.org/10.3390/math10214161 [Google Scholar]
  39. Liu, Chunhua, Trevor Cohn, and Lea Frermann
    2023 “Seeking Clozure: Robust Hypernym Extraction from BERT with Anchored Prompts.” Proceedings of the 12th Joint Conference on Lexical and Computational Semantics (*SEM 2023), –. 10.18653/v1/2023.starsem‑1.18
    https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2023.starsem-1.18 [Google Scholar]
  40. Madsen, Bodil Nistrup, Bolette Sandford Pedersen, and Hanne Erdman Thomsen
    2001 “Defining Semantic Relations for OntoQuery.” Ontology-Based Interpretation of Noun Phrases. Proceedings of the First International OntoQuery Workshop, –.
    [Google Scholar]
  41. Maia, Belinda, and Sérgio Matos
    2008 “Corpógrafo V.4 — Tools for Researchers and Teachers Using Comparable Corpora.” InProceedings of LREC 2008 Workshop on Comparable Corpora, edited byPierre Zweigenbaum, Éric Gaussier, and Pascale Fung. Language Resources Evaluation Conference.
    [Google Scholar]
  42. Marshman, Elizabeth
    2006 “Lexical Knowledge Patterns for Semi-Automatic Extraction of Cause–Effect and Association Relations from Medical Texts: A Comparative Study of English and French.” PhD Thesis, Université de Montréal.
    [Google Scholar]
  43. 2008 “Expressions of Uncertainty in Candidate Knowledge-Rich Contexts: A Comparison in English and French Specialized Texts.” Terminology (): –. 10.1075/term.14.1.07mar
    https://doi.org/10.1075/term.14.1.07mar [Google Scholar]
  44. 2014 “Enriching Terminology Resources with Knowledge-Rich Contexts: A Case Study.” Terminology (): –. 10.1075/term.20.2.05mar
    https://doi.org/10.1075/term.20.2.05mar [Google Scholar]
  45. 2022 “Knowledge Patterns in Corpora.” InTheoretical Perspectives on Terminology: Explaining Terms, Concepts and Specialized Knowledge, edited byPamela Faber and Marie-Claude L’Homme. Terminology and Lexicography Research and Practice 23. 10.1075/tlrp.23.13mar
    https://doi.org/10.1075/tlrp.23.13mar [Google Scholar]
  46. Marshman, Elizabeth, Julie L. Gariépy, and Clarissa Harms
    2012 “Helping Language Professionals Relate to Terms: Terminological Relations and Termbases.” The Journal of Specialised Translation: –. 10.26034/cm.jostrans.2012.437
    https://doi.org/10.26034/cm.jostrans.2012.437 [Google Scholar]
  47. Meyer, Ingrid
    2001 “Extracting Knowledge-Rich Contexts for Terminography — A Conceptual and Methodological Framework.” InRecent Advances in Computational Terminology, edited byDidier Bourigault, Christian Jacquemin, and Marie-Claude L’Homme. Natural Language Processing 2. John Benjamins. 10.1075/nlp.2.15mey
    https://doi.org/10.1075/nlp.2.15mey [Google Scholar]
  48. Meyer, Ingrid, Lynne Bowker, and Karen Eck
    1992 “COGNITERM: An Experiment in Building а Terminological Knowledge Base.” Proceedings of the Fifth EURALEX International Congress (EURALEX ’92), –.
    [Google Scholar]
  49. Meyer, Ingrid, Karen Eck, and Douglas Skuce
    1997 “Systematic Concept Analysis within a Knowledge-Based Approach to Terminology.” InHandbook of Terminology Management, edited bySue Ellen Wright and Gerhard Budin, Volume 1: Basic Aspects of Terminology Management. John Benjamins. 10.1075/z.htm1.14mey
    https://doi.org/10.1075/z.htm1.14mey [Google Scholar]
  50. Mititelu, Verginica Barbu
    2006 “Automatic Extraction of Patterns Displaying Hyponym-Hypernym Co-Occurrence from Corpora.” Paper presented atCESCL, Budapest, Hungary. Proceedings of the First CESCL.
    [Google Scholar]
  51. Morin, Emmanuel
    1998 “Prométhée : un outil d’aide à l’acquisition de relation sémantiques entre termes.” InProceedings of TALN 1998, edited byPierre Zweigenbaum. ATALA.
    [Google Scholar]
  52. 1999 “Acquisition de patrons lexico-syntaxiques caractéristiques d’une relation sémantique.” Traitement automatique des langues (): –.
    [Google Scholar]
  53. Murphy, M. Lynne, and Anu Koskela
    2010Key Terms in Semantics. 1st ed.Continuum.
    [Google Scholar]
  54. Nuopponen, Anita
    2022 “Conceptual Relations.” InTheoretical Perspectives on Terminology: Explaining Terms, Concepts and Specialized Knowledge, edited byPamela Faber and Marie-Claude L’Homme. Terminology and Lexicography Research and Practice 23. John Benjamins. 10.1075/tlrp.23.03nuo
    https://doi.org/10.1075/tlrp.23.03nuo [Google Scholar]
  55. Pearson, Jennifer
    1998Terms in Context. John Benjamins. 10.1075/scl.1
    https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.1 [Google Scholar]
  56. Roller, Stephen, Douwe Kiela, and Maximilian Nickel
    2018 “Hearst Patterns Revisited: Automatic Hypernym Detection from Large Text Corpora.” Proceedings of the 56th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 2: Short Papers), –. 10.18653/v1/P18‑2057
    https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/P18-2057 [Google Scholar]
  57. Rosch, Eleanor
    1978 “Principles of Categorization.” InCognition and Categorization, edited byEleanor Rosch and Barbara Bloom Lloyd. no.. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
    [Google Scholar]
  58. Rosch, Eleanor, Carolyn B. Mervis, Wayne D. Gray, David M. Johnson, and Penny Boyes-Braem
    1976 “Basic Objects in Natural Categories.” Cognitive Psychology (): –. 10.1016/0010‑0285(76)90013‑X
    https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(76)90013-X [Google Scholar]
  59. San Martín, Antonio
    2022 “A Flexible Approach to Terminological Definitions: Representing Thematic Variation.” International Journal of Lexicography (): –. 10.1093/ijl/ecab013
    https://doi.org/10.1093/ijl/ecab013 [Google Scholar]
  60. San Martín, Antonio, Catherine Trekker, and Juan Carlos Díaz-Bautista
    2023 “Extracting the Agent-Patient Relation from Corpus With Word Sketches.” Proceedings of the 4th Conference on Language, Data and Knowledge (Vienna, Austria), –. https://aclanthology.org/2023.ldk-1.73.pdf
    [Google Scholar]
  61. San Martín, Antonio, Catherine Trekker, and Pilar León-Araúz
    2022 “Repérage automatisé de l’hyponymie dans des corpus spécialisés en français à l’aide de Sketch Engine.” Terminology (): –. 10.1075/term.20044.san
    https://doi.org/10.1075/term.20044.san [Google Scholar]
  62. Seitner, Julian, Christian Bizer, Kai Eckert, et al
    2016 “A Large Database of Hypernymy Relations Extracted from the Web.” Proceedings of the 10th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-16), –.
    [Google Scholar]
  63. Sloutsky, Vladimir M.
    2003 “The Role of Similarity in the Development of Categorization.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences (): –. 10.1016/S1364‑6613(03)00109‑8
    https://doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00109-8 [Google Scholar]
  64. Snow, Rion, Daniel Jurafsky, and Andrew Y. Ng
    2004 “Learning Syntactic Patterns for Automatic Hypernym Discovery.” Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems: –.
    [Google Scholar]
  65. Steinberger, Ralf, Andreas Eisele, Szymon Klocek, Spyridon Pilos, and Patrick Schlüter
    2012 “DGT-TM: A Freely Available Translation Memory in 22 Languages.” InProceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC’12), edited byNicoletta Calzolari, Khalid Choukri, Thierry Declerck, European Language Resources Association (ELRA). www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2012/pdf/814_Paper.pdf
    [Google Scholar]
  66. Van Campenhoudt, Marc
    2004 “Réseau sémantique et approche componentielle des bases de données lexicales multilingues.” International Journal of Lexicography (): –. 10.1093/ijl/17.2.155
    https://doi.org/10.1093/ijl/17.2.155 [Google Scholar]
  67. Yun, Geonil, Yongjae Lee, A-Seong Moon, and Jaesung Lee
    2023 “Hypert: Hypernymy-Aware BERT with Hearst Pattern Exploitation for Hypernym Discovery.” Journal of Big Data (): . 10.1186/s40537‑023‑00818‑0
    https://doi.org/10.1186/s40537-023-00818-0 [Google Scholar]
  68. Zhang, Qianqian, Mengdong Chen, and Lianzhong Liu
    2017 “A Review on Entity Relation Extraction.” 2017 Second International Conference on Mechanical, Control and Computer Engineering (ICMCCE), , –. 10.1109/ICMCCE.2017.14
    https://doi.org/10.1109/ICMCCE.2017.14 [Google Scholar]
  69. Zhao, Youwen, Xiangbo Yuan, Ye Yuan, Shaoxiong Deng, and Jun Quan
    2023 “Relation Extraction: Advancements through Deep Learning and Entity-Related Features.” Social Network Analysis and Mining (): . 10.1007/s13278‑023‑01095‑8
    https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-023-01095-8 [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1075/term.25022.san
Loading
/content/journals/10.1075/term.25022.san
Loading

Data & Media loading...

  • Article Type: Research Article
Keywords: hyponymy ; corpus analysis ; knowledge patterns
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error