Analysis of the Semantic Distance of Words in the RuWordNet Thesaurus

Abstract

The article presents the analyses of analogues in the RuWordNet thesaurus regarding their semantic distance. Consideration of analogues is by nature a comprehensive analysis for identifying of possible routes for each pair of words with application of both traditional linguistic methods and approaches of cognitive and corpus linguistics. The lack of semantic connections between some members of the series, as well as the inconsistency of their routes with the general linguistic representations established in the dictionaries serves the basis for distance spacing between words in the RuWordNet thesaurus. Methods for bringing analogues, which are remote in the RuWordNet thesaurus, closer together, were proposed basing on a comparative analysis of the data in the explanatory dictionaries and in the New Explanatory Dictionary of Synonyms of the Russian Language, taking into account semantic relations of inclusion or meanings intersection. Basing on the obtained data, recommendations to reduce the distances between analogues were formulated for RuWordNet; and general principles of analysis were proposed, which could be useful for RuWordNet verifying.