Search

In this paper we present the methodology, implementations and evaluation results of the crosslanguage retrieval system we have developed for the Robust WSD Task at CLEF 2008. Our system is based on query preprocessing for translation and homogenisation of queries. The presented preprocessing of queries includes two stages: Firstly, a query translation step based on term statistics of cooccuring articles in Wikipedia. Secondly, different disjunct query composition techniques to search in the CLEF corpus. We apply the same preprocessing steps for the monolingual as well as the crosslingual task and thereby acting fair and in a similar way across these tasks. The evaluation revealed that the similar processing comes at nearly no costs for monolingual retrieval but enables us to do crosslanguage retrieval and also a feasible comparison of our system performance on these two tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Semantic Web technologies in general and ontology-based approaches in particular are considered the foundation for the next generation of information services. While ontologies enable software agents to exchange knowledge and information in a standardized, intelligent manner, describing todayŠs vast amount of information in terms of ontological knowledge remains a challenge. In this paper we describe the research project AVALON - Acquisition and VAL-idation of ONtologies, which aims at reducing the knowledge acquisition bottleneck by using methods from ontology learning in the context of a cybernetic control system. We will present techniques allowing us to automatically extract knowledge from textual data and formulating hypothesis based upon the extracted knowledge. Based on real world indicators, like for example business numbers, hypotheses are validated and the result is fed back into the system, thereby closing the cybernetic control system's feedback loop. While AVALON is currently under development, we will present intermediate results and the basic idea behind the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]