Definitional Sentence

A Definitional Sentence is a definitional statement that is a declarative sentence.

• Context:
  • It can (typically) include a Hypernymy Relation (mention).
  • It can (typically) be produced by a Definitional Sentence Generation Task (such as automated definitional sentence generation).
  • It can range from (typically) being a Text-based Definitional Sentence to being an Uttered Definitional Sentence.
  • It can include a Meronomy Relation (mention).
  • It can be preceded by a Definitional Question (via a definitional QA task).
  • …
• Example(s):
  • "A definitional statement is a declarative linguistic statement that defines a concept."
  • a GM-RKB Concept Definition Sentence.
  • …
• Counter-Example(s):
  • a Glossary Entry, which is often semi-structured.
  • a Definitional Passage, or Definitional Paragraph (with more than one NL sentence.
  • an Interrogative Sentence.
• See: Definitional Sentence Classification Task.

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References

2010

• (Navigli & Velardi, 2010) ⇒ Roberto Navigli, and Paola Velardi. (2010). “Learning Word-class Lattices for Definition and Hypernym Extraction.” In: Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-2010).
  • QUOTE: given a definition, e.g.: “In computer science, a closure is a first-class function with free variables that are bound in the lexical environment”, we assume that it contains the following fields (Storrer and Wellinghoff, 2006):
    • The DEFINIENDUM field (DF): this part of the definition includes the definiendum (that is, the word being defined) and its modifiers (e.g., “In computer science, a closure”);
    • The DEFINITOR field (VF): it includes the verb phrase used to introduce the definition (e.g., “is”);
    • The DEFINIENS field (GF): it includes the genus phrase (usually including the hypernym, e.g., “a first-class function”);
    • The REST field (RF): it includes additional clauses that further specify the differentia of the definiendum with respect to its genus (e.g., “with free variables that are bound in the lexical environment”).
  • Further examples of definitional sentences annotated with the above fields are shown in Table 1.

2007

• (Yy, Le et al., 2007) ⇒ Hong Yu, Minsuk Lee, David Kaufman, John Ely, Jerome A Osheroff, George Hripcsak, and James Cimino. (2007). “Development, Implementation, and a Cognitive Evaluation of a Definitional Question Answering System for Physicians." In: Journal of Biomedical Informatics, 40(3). doi:10.1016/j.jbi.2007.03.002
  • QUOTE: The definitional sentences were identified by lexico-syntactic patterns. For example, “qureyterm, Formative Verb (e.g., “is” and “are”, Noun Phrase)” can be used to identify a definitional sentence such as “vulvar vestibulitis syndrome (VVS) is a common form of dyspareunia in premenopausal women” to answer a question such as “What is vulvar vestibulitis syndrome?”

2006

• (Storrer & Wellinghoff. 2006) ⇒ Angelika Storrer, and Sandra Wellinghoff. (2006). “Automated Detection and Annotation of Term Definitions in German Text Corpora.” In: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2006)

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