Lexical adaptation of link grammar to the biomedical sublanguage: a comparative evaluation of three approaches

Background: We study the adaptation of Link Grammar Parser to the biomedical sublanguage with a focus on domain terms not found in a general parser lexicon. Using two biomedical corpora, we implement and evaluate three approaches to addressing unknown words: automatic lexicon expansion, the use of morphological clues, and disambiguation using a part-of-speech tagger. We evaluate each approach separately for its effect on parsing performance and consider combinations of these approaches. Results: In addition to a 45% increase in parsing efficiency, we find that the best approach, incorporating information from a domain part-of-speech tagger, offers a statistically significant 10% relative decrease in error. Conclusion: When available, a high-quality domain part-of-speech tagger is the best solution to unknown word issues in the domain adaptation of a general parser. In the absence of such a resource, surface clues can provide remarkably good coverage and performance when tuned to the d...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2006
• Where: BMCBI
• Authors: Sampo Pyysalo, Tapio Salakoski, Sophie Aubin, Adeline Nazarenko
• Keywords: BMCBI 2006, Domain Part-of-speech Tagger, General Parser, Part-of-speech Tagger