Detection and correction of malapropisms in Spanish by means of Internet search

Igor A. Bolshakov, Sofia N. Galicia-Haro, Alexander Gelbukh

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

Malapropisms are real-word errors that lead to syntactically correct but semantically implausible text. We report an experiment on detection and correction of Spanish malapropisms. Malapropos words semantically destroy collocations (syntactically connected word pairs) they are in. Thus we detect possible malapropisms as words that do not form semantically plausible collocations with neighboring words. As correction candidates, we select words similar to the suspected one but forming plausible collocations with neighboring words. To judge semantic plausibility of a collocation, we use Google statistics of occurrences of the word combination and of the two words taken apart. Since collocation components can be separated by other words in a sentence, Google statistics is gathered for the most probable distance between them. The statistics is recalculated to a specially defined Semantic Compatibility Index (SCI). Heuristic rules are proposed to signal malapropisms when SCI values are lower than a predetermined threshold and to retain a few highly SCI-ranked correction candidates. Our experiments gave promising results.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationText, Speech and Dialogue - 8th International Conference, TSD 2005, Proceedings
PublisherSpringer Verlag
Pages115-122
Number of pages8
ISBN (Print)3540287892, 9783540287896
DOIs
StatePublished - 2005
Event8th International Conference on Text, Speech and Dialogue, TSD 2005 - Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic
Duration: 12 Sep 200515 Sep 2005

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume3658 LNAI
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference8th International Conference on Text, Speech and Dialogue, TSD 2005
Country/TerritoryCzech Republic
CityKarlovy Vary
Period12/09/0515/09/05

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