Word-sense disambiguation in NLP

In the realm of Natural Language Processing (NLP), a facet of artificial intelligence dedicated
to deciphering and comprehending human language, the intricate dance of words wielding
multiple meanings presents a formidable challenge. While our cognitive faculties navigate
this linguistic issues adeptly, computers struggle with the same task. The significance of a
word’s connotation hinges on its surroundings, but for machines, capturing the
encompassing context remains a formidable feat. Metaphors, modifiers, negations, and the
myriad subtleties of language intricately interweave, confounding machine learning.

The pragmatic applications of NLP underscore the criticality of disentangling word senses,
propelling the emergence of diverse disambiguation techniques. Among these,
contemporary machine learning methodologies encompass supervised tactics. Here,
algorithms learn from a trove of manually annotated words, each tagged with its specific
sense, expediting classification. Nevertheless, this route is beset with challenges:
assembling these tagged datasets proves expensive, time-intensive, and inherently
imperfect, given that even human annotators concur on word senses only 70-95% of the
time (Edmonds, 2006). Counterbalancing this e ort, unsupervised approaches come into
play, encompassing methods that endeavor to cluster words grounded in shared contextual
traits.

Lesk’s Algorithm: A simple method for word-sense disambiguation

Perhaps one of the earliest and still most used methods for word-sense disambiguation
today is Lesk’s Algorithm, proposed by Michael E. Lesk in 1986. Lesk’s algorithm is based on
the idea that words that appear together in text are related somehow, and that the
relationship and corresponding context of the words can be extracted through the definitions
of the words of interest as well as the other words used around it. Developed long before the
advent of modern technology, Lesk’s algorithm aims to disambiguate the meaning of words
of interest — usually appearing within a short phrase or sentence — by finding the pair of
matching dictionary “senses” (i.e. synonyms) with the greatest word overlap in dictionary
definitions. The Lesk algorithm is an knowledge based approach to word sense
disambiguation. It works by comparing the context of the target word to the contexts of its
di erent senses in a dictionary. The sense with the most similar context is the most likely
correct sense.

In its most basic essence, Lesk’s algorithm operates by tallying the common features
between the dictionary definitions of a target word and those of the neighboring words within
a designated “context window.” This window encompasses the surrounding terms which
would be considered for respective words. The algorithm then selects the definition
associated with the word that displays the highest count of overlaps, while excluding
common stop words like “the,” “a,” and “and.” This chosen definition is posited as the
inferred “sense” of the word.

STEPS:

1. Select Word: Choose the word for which you want to determine the correct meaning.
Let’s call this the “target word.”

2. Define Context Window: Identify a group of nearby words around the target word.
This collection of words is known as the “context window.”

3. Compare Definitions: Compare the dictionary definitions of the target word with the
definitions of the words within the context window.

4. Count Overlaps: Count the number of words that appear in both the target word’s
definitions and the definitions of the words in the context window. Exclude common
words like “the,” “a,” and “and.”

5. Choose Most Overlapping Definition: Select the definition of the target word that
has the highest count of overlapping words from step 4. This chosen definition
represents the most likely meaning of the target word in its current context.
 Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages

1. Simple to implement: Lesk’s algorithm is a relatively simple algorithm that can be

2. Applicable in a variety of di erent contexts: Lesk’s algorithm does not rely on

3. Easily generalizable: Lesk’s algorithm is easily generalizable to new words and new
contexts. This is because the algorithm does not rely on global information or the
structure of the sentence.

4. Non-syntactic: Lesk’s algorithm is non-syntactic, which means that it does not rely
on the arrangement of words in a sentence. This makes it more robust to errors in
grammar and punctuation.

5. Accuracy level: Lesk’s algorithm has been shown to be accurate in most cases,
especially for words with clearly defined sentence with di erent sense of similar
words. However, the algorithm can be less accurate for words with multiple senses
that are semantically similar.

Disadvantages limitations challenges

1. Low accuracy: Lesk’s algorithm has been shown to have low accuracy, especially for
words with multiple senses that are semantically similar. For example, the word
“bank” can have multiple senses, such as a financial institution, a riverbank, or a
slope.

2. Low recall: Lesk’s algorithm also has low recall, meaning that it cannot disambiguate
many words. This is because the algorithm does not consider the context of the word
in the sentence.

Overall, Lesk’s algorithm is a simple, e ective, and versatile algorithm for word sense
disambiguation. It is a good choice for a variety of applications, especially for those where
speed and accuracy are important.
Overall, Lesk’s algorithm is a simple and e ective algorithm for word sense disambiguation.
However, it has some limitations, such as its low accuracy and low recall. These limitations
can be addressed by using a better dictionary, weighting the matched terms, and adjusting
the context window size as mentioned below

Unanswered questions

Lesk’s algorithm leaves several questions unanswered, such as:

1. What dictionary should be used? The Lesk algorithm does not specify which
dictionary should be used. This can a ect the accuracy of the algorithm, as di erent
dictionaries may have di erent definitions for the same word.

2. Should all matched terms be considered equally, or should they be weighed by the
length of the dictionary definition? The Lesk algorithm does not specify how to weight
the matched terms. This can also a ect the accuracy of the algorithm, as some terms
may be more important than others.

3. How wide should the context window be? The Lesk algorithm does not specify how
wide the context window should be. This can also a ect the accuracy of the
algorithm, as a wider context window may capture more information about the word,
but it may also include irrelevant information.

These types of questions help us discover the best fit for our use-case and improve algorithm
as per our need,

One way to improve the accuracy of Lesk’s algorithm is to use a better dictionary. A better
dictionary would have more accurate and complete definitions for words.

Another way to improve the accuracy of is to weight the matched terms. Some terms may be
more important than others, and weighting the terms can help to improve the accuracy of
the algorithm.

Another way to improve is to adjust the context window size. A wider context window may
capture more information about the word, but it may also include irrelevant information.
Adjusting the context window size can help to improve the accuracy of the algorithm by
capturing the relevant information while filtering out the irrelevant information.