Extending WordNet with Syntagmatic Information

In this paper we present a proposal to extend WordNet-like lexical databases by adding information about the co-occurrence of word meanings in texts. More specifically we propose to add phrasets, i.e. sets of free combinations of words which are recurrently used to express a concept (let’s call them Recurrent Free Phrases). Phrasets are a useful source of information for different NLP tasks, and particularly in a multilingual environment to manage lexical gaps. At least a part of recurrent free phrases can also be represented through a new set of syntagmantic (lexical and semantic) WordNet relations.