MULTITALE: linking medical concepts by means of frames 
Isa Maks and Willy Martin 
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam 
Dept. of Lexicology 
De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV Amsterdam 
makse@jet.let.vu.nl 
martin w@jet.let.vu.nl 
ABSTRACT 
In this paper MULTITALE, a system for the 
semantic tagging of medical neurosurgical texts and 
for the semi-automatic expansion of the medical 
lexicon, will be presented. Given the textual 
information explosion (in particular in, though not 
restricted to, specialized domains) there is an urgent 
need for tools enabling to exploit the information 
available in natural language texts. MULTITALE 
has been devised therefore primarily with the aim to 
make explicit semantic information in medical texts, 
which should lead to more refined information 
retrieval results. By making "educated guesses" the 
system moreover has a possibility to expand its own 
lexicon of medical terms so to be able to cope with 
new texts. 
I. INTRODUCTION 
MULTITALE has been developed as part of an EU project 
(MLAP 93-04) which has been started in 1994 and has 
been completed recently. The F, nglish part of it was 
carried out by the Belgian partner" (Office Line Engineering 
NV, Zonnegcm; RAM1T, Gent) , the Dutch part by the 
Dutch partner (Lexicology Research Group, Free 
University Amsterdam1). Although both groups share the 
same starting point and objectives, the methods lbllowed 
show some idiosyncracies, thercibre if in what follows 
MUITI'ITALE is mentioned, actually the MULTITAI,E 
l)utch module is meant. 
11. SEMANTIC MODEL 
The senmntic tagging is based on the CEN/TC251-model 
for Surgical Procedures (CEN,1994). This model is a 
classification and coding system of medical procedures. 
It distinguishes the following concept types: 
CC_Surgical Deed (indicating the surgical intervention), 
CC_Anatomy (indicating anatomical concepts), 
CC Pathology (indicating pathological concepts), 
CC Interventional Equipment (indicating the instrument), 
CC Combi (a term which has a medical meaning only ira 
combination with another-medical- term), 
r T. 1,'rizzanin (syntax), A. Kramer (lexicon), 1. Maks (syntax and 
semantics), W. Martin (overall supervision) 
CC modifier_bodyside,CC_modifierextent, 
CC_modifier_number (terms which modit~¢ other medical 
terms. 
The Surgical deed concept is classified into 12 subtypes, 
among others: CS_remove, CS close, CS_create, CS close, 
CS install, CS make appear. The Surgical decd concept 
is considered as the nncleus of the surgical procedure and 
may have different types of relationships with the other" 
medical concepts: 
the R Direct object indicates the object on which the 
surgical deed is carried out; 
the R_Indirect_Object indicates the object to or from or in 
which the surgical deed is carried out; 
the R_Location indicates the place where the Surgical 
Deed is carried out; 
the Rmeans indicates that with which the Surgical Deed is 
carried out; 
the R nmnner indicates how the Surgical I)ecd is carried 
out. 
The next example illustrates the CEN\TC251-model. 
The input is taken fl'om a report of a ncurosurgical 
intervention; the output is generated by the MULTITALI,; 
system. 
(ex. 1) 
INPUT: 
Enkele fragmenten discus worden nog verw!/derd, dan 
worden met een beitelOe de osteofytaire randen van de 
dekplaat weggenomen. 
(Some J?agments of the discus are removed, therec~er the 
osteophytie edges of the cover plate are taken away mith a 
chisel) 
OU'I'PUT: 
Enkele fragmenten discus 
R dir object CC anatomy S NP 
Enkele 
fi'agmenten CC combi 
discus CC anatomy 
worden s verb 
nog s adverb 
verwijderd CC_surg_deed CS remove s_verb 
+R dir_object I';nkele fraglncnten discus 
dan 
worden 
met een beiteltje 
R means 
met 
s vcrb 
CC interv equip S PP 
746 
cell 
beiteltje CC_ interv eqtfip s notre 
de osteofytaire randen van de dekplaat 
R dir ob. ect CCAmthology S NP 
dc 
osteofytaire CC_pathoh}gy s_adj 
randcn CC combi s noun 
van 
de 
dekplaat CC_ _anatomy S houri 
weggenomen CC_surg deed CS_remove s ycrb 
t P. dirobject de osteofytaire randen win de 
dekphmt 
I P,_means met een beiteltie 2 
ill. OVI<RAI,L ARCIlITECTURE 
MUI/ITI'ALE SYSTEM 
OF TIlE 
The MUI,TITAI,E system consists of 5 modules : 
1. - A syntactic tagger and lcmmatizer for l)utch medical 
language. 
2. - A syntactic module lbr the lbrmation of minimal NPs 
and PPs. 'l'he syntactical module functions as a 
preprocessor. As a consequence syntax is kept to a 
minimum and partial: only clause segmentation, verb- 
detection and NI'/PI' demarcation is considered to be 
necessary. 
3. - A module for the attribution of concept typc to the 
minimal NPs and PPs. Given syntactical "chuncks" (verbs, 
NPs, PPs) within a certain space (ehmse), MUI/1TFALE 
tries to assign eolmepts to them. The system is preferential 
in that it has defined - based upon corpus observation and 
sublanguage modelling - a priority ranking/hierarchy of 
concepts when occurring in combination, to lbrm one 
complex concept. This priority ranking/hierarchy looks as 
follows: 
CC Surgical l)eed 
CC_ l'athology 
(2C_ .lnterventional Equipment 
CC Anatonay 
CC Colnbi 
It governs the concept type calculus so that e.g. in an 
expression with a Surgical Deed, the latter overrules all 
other concepts as in rechler \]CC-Modifier-lk}dyside\] 
retromasloidale ICC-Anatomyl incisie \[CC-Surgicat 
deed\]. So, too in tire expression oste@taire \[CC- 
l'ath{}logy\] randen \[CC-Combi\] van de dekplaat \]CC- 
Anatt}my\] tile Pathology concept will overrule the other 
COlrccpts. 
4.- A linking module for linking surgical deeds concepts 
with other medical concepts witllin the clause. 
5.- A guessing module for suggesting the concept type of 
tmkn(}wn w(}rds '\['he last two modules will bc discussed in 
scction IV. and V. I}elow. 
2 
...... surgical deed clause limit s =: synlactic tag 
I( = semantic link q := linked wilh 
CC = concept type tag CS :: surgical deed 
stlbtypc lag 
I)uring this process MUI/I'ITAI,E uses the following 
knowledge bases: 
(A) the st,rgical deed lexicon: a lexicon of surgical deed 
concepts, containing about 250 tokens with their COllcepl 
type (CC st, rgical._deed), surgical deed 
subtype and part-of-speech (=<CAT>). 
<lemma> wegnelllen to remove 
<cat> verb 
<concept type> CC surgical decd 
<concept subtype>CS remove 
<endlemma> 
(B) the non-surgical-deed-lexicon: a lexicon of non- 
surgieaMeed concepts, containing about 800 tokens with 
their concept type and part-of-spcech 
<lemma> beitet chisel 
<cat> north 
<concept type> CC intervent .equipment 
<endlemma> 
(C) the type lexicon: a knowledge base with an entry for 
each of the 12 surgical deed subtypes and 1 "neutral" 
subtype . For each entry are specilied, the possible 
Senmntic Links and the possible concept types related with 
those Semantic IAnks. I:or an example see section V.2 (ex. 
8c) and section V.3 (ex. 10). 
(D) a database with prepositions and their ftmctions 
(called l. values) 
<lemma> op on 
<1 wflue> 1 site 
<l value> I location 
<endlemma> 
IV. 
IV.I 
TIlE IANKING MOI)ULE 
INTRODUCTION 
The input of tile linking module is the sentence segmented 
in NPs , I'Ps and verbs wilh - if relevant - their concept 
type (assigned by the concept type assigmncllt module).: 
(ex. 2) 
enkele J?agmenten discus 
\[NI' CC Anatomy\] 
worden 
weggenomen \[ CC surgical_deed, CS_ r'cnlovc\] 
met een I,eiteltje \[Pl' CC lnterventional Equipment\] 
The task of the linking module is to combine the concepts 
of the sentence in order to build a colnpositc surgical 
procedure concept, respecting the CEN norms. Since the 
C\]:,N-model has much in common with Filhnore's Case 
Grammar (Filhnore, 1968), Case grammar-like fi'ames fi)r 
the implementation of the model have been used. Case 
grammar gives an analysis of a sentence, centered around 
lhe verb. CEN gives an a,mlysis of a surgical procedure, 
centered arotmd the Surgical deed concept (which is often 
a verb). The definition o1" the cases of Case (hammar is 
similar to the definition of CI¢N Semantic I,inks, both of 
them expressing relations between w,'ious parts of the 
sentence. In Case grammar, selection restrictions arc 
specilied lbr cases, in CIiN those parts of the sentence 
which are candida|e lbr a Semantic lank, refer to erie of 
tire CliNodel\]ned medical concepts. 
7 4 "7 
(ex. 3) 
Het aneurysma wordt afgeelipt met een rechte clip. 
(The aneurysm is cut off with a straight clip) 
Considering a sentence like example 3, the system has to 
decide which noun phrase can be related to the verb and 
what is the nature of that relationship. The possible 
Semantic Links correspond to the CEN Semantic Links. 
So, in relation to the verb afelippen (to cut off) we find - 
among others- Direct Object and Means. Like for Case 
Grammar, there are markers, like prepositions or the lack 
of prepositions, which point to a certain Semantic Link. 
In the above example, the preposition met (with) is an 
indicator for Means and it is the absence of a preposition 
which points to the Direct Object. For identifying the 
Scmantic I,inks, three particular kinds of information are 
needed: 
1. the surgical deed concept and its possible Semantic 
Links 
2. the NP and its concept type 
3. the Prepositions and their values (l values). 
Frames are chosen for the implementation of the 
model. They have a top level which is fixed and represents 
things that are true of a certain situation. They have a lower 
level with slots, conditions on the slots and fillers, which 
represent things that are expected for a certain situation 
(Minsky, 1975). As regards the top level, three different 
kinds of frames are defined for Multitale. 
a. standard surgical deed frame: 
LEXICAL ELEMENT surgical deed concept 
PART OF SPEECIt verb 
CONCEPT TYPE CC_surgical_decd 
CONCEPT SUBTYPE subtype of CC_surgical_decd: 
CS.. 
b. variant surgical deed frame: 
LEXICAL ELEMENT surgical deed concept 
PART OF SPEECII noun 
CONCEPT TYPE CC-surgical-deed 
CONCEPT SUBTYPE subtype of CC surgical_deed : 
CS.. 
c. non-surgical-deed frame: 
LEXICAL ELEMENT non-surgical-deed concept 
PART OF SPEECH noun 
CONCEPT TYPE non_surgical-deed concept type 
The lower level of the non-surgical-deed frame will be 
discussed below being different from the lower level of 
both the surgical-deed-frames. The lower level of the 
surgical deed frames contains sets of slots for the 
identification of Semantic I,inks. The set consists of a slot - 
called ROLE- for the type of Semantic Link, a slot -called 
ARG- lbr the pointer to the clement in the sentence which 
is linked to the surgical deed concept, a slot -called CC - 
tbr the concept type' of the element which is linked and 
finally a slot -called IND- for the indication (I-value) of the 
function of the linked element. Each slot can specify 
conditions its filler must meet. 
slots: 
ROLE 
ARG 
CC 
IND 
ROI,E 
conditions on the fillers are marked with *' 
*one of the CEN-defincd Semantic Links 
*CEN-defincd concept types 
* l-values 
ARG 
CC 
1ND 
ROLl'2 
The conditions on the fillers are found in the surgical deed 
lexicon and the type lexicon. The type lexicon gives 
general information for the surgical deed subtype; the 
surgical deed lexicon gives information for the individual 
token, the individual surgical deed concept. 
IV.2 THE LINKING MODULE STEP BY STEP 
For filling in the frame and analyzing the sentence, the 
system performs the following steps for each Surgical- 
deed-clause. 
(ex. 4a) 
.. de catheter wordt in de wond geplaatst 
(the catheter has been installed in the wound) 
a. consultation of the surgical deed lexicon for finding the 
subtype entry ofplaatsen in the surgical deed lexicon: 
<lemma> plaatsen 
<cat> verb 
<concept type> CC_surgical_deed 
<concept subtype> CS_install 
b. consultation of the type lexicon for defining the frame 
The following frame will be built (conditons on the fillers 
of the slots are marked with *): 
LEXICAL ELEMENT geplaatst 
PART OF SPEECH verb 
CONCEPT TYPE CC_surgical deed 
CONCEPT SUBTYPE CS install 
ROLE 
ARG 
CC 
IND 
ROLE 
ARG 
CC 
IND 
ROLE 
ARG 
CC 
R DIRECT OBJECT 
*CC inter equipment/ 
*CC combi/CC WAY/ 
*CC_anatomy 
*I NONE 
*R INDIRECT OBJECT 
* CC pathology/CC_anatomy 
*I SITE 
*R MEANS 
* CC_inter_equipment/ 
* CC_anatomy 
*1 MEANS 
*I~ LOC 
IND 
ROLE 
ARG 
CC *CC_anatomy/CC pathology/ 
*CC combi 
IND *I LOC 
ROLE *R MANNER 
ARG 
CC * CC_surgical_deed 
IND *I MANNER 
e. if necessary, adaptation of the frame with information 
from the surgical deed lexicon will take place. 
748 
d. if necessary, adaptation of the fl'ame will be carried out 
il' the surgical deed concept is a noun o," a non-finite tbr,n 
of the verb. 
Thc subtype frame is specified for the finite form of the 
verb and the past participle. If the st.rgical deed concept is 
a noun or an infinitive form of the verb, the 
R direct object is marked by thc preposition wm (I_valuc 
= l_van). Therefore, the condition on the <lND>-slot of 
thc R Direct_object, will be changed to Ivan. 
e. filling in the slots: 
(ex. 4b) 
.. de catheter wordt in de wend geplaatst 
I,EX1CAI, ELEMI';NT gcplaatst 
PAI(T OF SPEECH verb 
CONCEPT TYPE CC_surgical_deed 
CONCEPT SUBTYPE CS install 
ROI,I'; R. I)IRECT OBJECT 
ARG -> de catheter 
CC CC INTERVF~NT_EQUIPMENT 
IND 1 NONE (-) 
ROI,E R INI)IREC'\[' OBJECT 
All(} -> in de wond 
CC CC_pathology 
INI) I SITE (in) 
The linking module tries to match the specifications of the 
elements of a Surgical-Deed-clause with the conditions on 
the fillers of a slot. 
IV.3 TIlE LINKING MODULE AND 
PREPOSITIONAL PIIRASE ATTACHMENT 
For all non-surgical-deed concepts, namely CC_anatomy , 
CC_pathology, CC_combi, and CC intervent_equipment, 
tim following frame has been defined: 
top-level: 
LEXICAL ELEMENT non-surgical-deed concept 
PART OF SPEECII NP or PP 
CONCEPT TYPE CC_anatomy/ CC_combi 
CC pathology/ 
CC intervent_equ ipment 
lower level: 
ROLE R POST MOt) 
ARG 
CC *non-surgical-deed concept type 
IND *I VAN 
POS *+1 
There is only one set of slots, expressing the link between 
two non-surgi-cal-deed concepts in a sentence: 
(ex. 5) 
..het intracellair gedeelte van de tumor wordt uitgecuret- 
teerd.. 
(the intracellar part of the turnout is cleaned) 
The prepositional phrase van de tumor modifies the noun 
phrase her intra- cellair gedeelte. The link between these 
two phrases is called post-modification link. The slot 
POS(ition) in combination with the constraint +1 requires 
that the postmodifying phrase directly tbllows the NP fi)r 
which this frame is defined. 
(ex. 6-a) 
non-surgical-deed frame with slots filled in: 
LEXICAI, I'~I,EMENT het intracellair gedeelte 
PART OF SPF, ECtl NP 
CONCH'T TYI'E CC combi 
ROLE R POST MOD 
ARG -> van de ttunor 
CC CC pathology 
IND I-VAN 
POS + 1 
(ex. 6-b) 
surgical (Iced franm with slots filled in: 
I,EXICAL ELI",M ENT uitgecuretteerd 
PART OI" SPEECtl verb 
CONCEPT TYPE CC surgical deed 
CONCEPT SUIYI'YPE CS clean 
I{OLE R DIRECT OBJECT 
ARG -> het intracellair gedeelte van de Innlor 
CC CC pathology 
INI) I_NONE (-) 
We have established an order for tim matching of the 
Semantic Links, giving priority to these Links which 
connect a surgical deed concept with another concept. 
(ex. 7) 
..waarna de Jkontale lob wm z~jn adherenties wordt vrijge- 
maakt 
(.. after that the frontal lobe has been freed ... ) 
The specifications of van zijn adherenties, CC pathology 
and 1 van mect both the conditions on the filler lbr tim 
R indirect object of the surgical deed concept and the 
conditions on the filler of the R POST MOD of the non- 
surgical-deed concept. Since the R lndirect_Object 
precedes the R_Post Mod van zijn adherenties will be 
linked - correctly - with vrijgemaakt. 
V. THE GUESSING MODULE 
V. 1 INTRODUCTION 
The guessing module of the Multitale system deals with 
the semi-automatic augmentation of the concept lexicons 
(=lexicons of surgical deeds and non- sm'gical deeds). The 
performance of the tagger depends Rn" a great deal on the 
completeness of the lexicon. If the lexicon does not contain 
a medical term, the tagger cannot assign a semantic link to 
this unknown term and another one in the sentence. The 
guessing module is an important help tbr the attgmentation 
of the concept lexicon, and consequently an important part 
of the Multitale system when tagging unknown texts. 
The lunction of the module is twofold: 
1. - generation of a list of words which m'e likely to be 
medical terms and CEN concepts. The list does not present 
just a list of words unknown to the system but a selection 
of words relevant to CEN. 
2. - suggestions regarding the concept type tbr each word 
of the generated list. The suggested concept types arc 
749 
CC_surgical_deed (without subtype) ,CCanatomy, 
CC~mthology, CC intervent equipment and CC_way. 
The module works semi-automatically: the list of 
unknown words is generated in an automatic way, but the 
user of the system has to decide whether the suggestion is 
correct or not before adding it to the lexicon. 
V.2 GUESSING NON-SURGICAL-DEED 
CONCEPTS 
The guessing module uses the frames of the linking 
module. For the guessing of the non-surgical-deed 
concepts, it uses the constraints given tbr the fillers of the 
slots of the surgical deed frame. The general rule is the 
following: if a phrase (noun phrase or prepositional phrase) 
has a Semantic Link with a surgical deed concept, at least 
one of the words of the phrase is a CEN- concept. Suppose 
a sentence contains a surgical deed concept, but the system 
is not able to make a semantic link between the surgical 
deed concept and another concept in the surgical-deed- 
clause. In most cases, this is due to the fact that the 
concept type of the terms is not known, for example: 
(ex. 8) 
.. de tunor wordt verwo'derd.. 
-de tumor CC-? 
-verwijderd CC surgical_deed CS remove 
(.. the turnout will be removed..) 
Suppose that tumor is not present in the lexicon, then the 
system is not able to meet the conditions of the slots of 
verw(/deren and cannot indicate the R_directobject. The 
l__wflue of de tumor meets the required value for the slot 
<IND>, but none of the concept classes required for the 
<CC> slot can be matched. 
(ex. 8a) 
LI;XICAL ELEMENT verwij derd 
PART O1" SPEECH verb 
CONCEPT TYPE CC_surgical_deed 
CONCI{PT SUBTYPE CS remove 
ROLE *R DIRECT ()BJECT 
ARG 
CC 
IND 
*CC pathology/CC_combi/ 
* CC_anatomy/ 
*CC_intervent equipment 
*l NONE 
The guessing module then 'relaxes' the conditions set and 
now considers the syntactic function of a noun phrase or a 
prepositional phrase (expressed by its Ivalue) as a 
sufficient indication for a semantic link. In other words: if 
the I value of an element in the surgical-deed- clause 
satifies one of the i+values rcquired for an <IND> slot, 
then the element will be linked. 
(ex. 8b) 
LEXICAL ELEMENT verwijderd 
PART OF SPEECII verb 
CONCEPT TYPE CC surgical_deed 
CONCEPT SUBTYPE CS remove 
I 
ROLER DIRECT OBJECT 
ARG -->de tumor 
CC ? 
IND i NONE 
The next step is to make a guess about tbe concept type of 
the filled-in element. The constraints - CC pathology, 
CC_colnbi and CC_anatomy (see frame \]br verwijderen) - 
of the <CC> slot, are considered as good candidates. To be 
able to make a choice for one of them, the constraints are 
connected with priority numbers, obtained by corpus 
observation: 
(ex. 8c) 
part of the entry CS remove of the type lexicon: 
priority number: 
<conceptClass> CC_surgical_deed 
<conceptSubclass>CSremove 
<rob R DIRECT OBJECT 
I I 
<cc 1 > CC_pathology 1 
<cc2> CC anatomy 2 
<cc3> CC_intervent_equipment 3 
<cc4> CC combi 2 
<prep I > I_NONE 
<rol>.. 
The numbers are based on the occurrences of combinations 
of concept types in the corpus. These occurrences are 
translated into priority numbers for the constraints on the 
<CC> slots which are registered in the type and surgical 
deed lexicon• The concept type with the highest occurrence 
(in combination with the given surgical deed concept and 
the given Semantic Link) was marked with the highest 
priority number (namely 1). The concept type with the 
highest number is considered the most likely candidate for 
the filled-in clement. So, the system will suggest the 
concept type CC pathology lbr tumor in (ex. 8). In most 
cases the element, for which the concept type is guessed, 
consists of more than one word: 
(ex. 9) 
• om de laterale tumorale expansie te kunnen verwijderen.. 
-de latcrale tumorale expansie 
CC-? R DIRECT OBJECT 
-verwijderen CC_surgical_deed CS remove 
(.. to be able to remove the tumoral expansion) 
The guessed concept type is suggested for all the nouns 
and adjectives, being the meaningful words in the phrase. 
Words which have a meaning in general language are 
marked <GEN>, to indicate that the guess is morc 
questionable than in other cases. 
results of the guessing module for (ex.) 9: 
laterale CC_pathology? 
tmnorale CC_pathology? 
expansic CC_pathology? 
3"he suggestion is only correct for tumorale, whereas 
laterale is of the type MC bodyside and expansie of the 
CC combi. In a later phase we intend to correct these 
cases of overgeneration. 
V.3 GUESSING SURGICAL DEED CONCEPTS 
The general rule for the guessing of sm'gical deeds is: each 
verb that has a Semantic Link with a CEN-concept, is a 
750 
surgical deed concept. For finding the unknown surgical 
deed concepts, Multitale makes use of the fi'ames as well. 
For each verb in the text that is not in the concept lexicon, 
a frame is built. This li'ame is called CS neutral, its 
semantic constraints - the allowed concept types - and its 
syntactic constraints - the I values - are less strict than the 
constraints which have been specified for the frames of the 
surgical deeds belonging to a specific snbtypc. Because of 
the 'neutral' character of tim fiamc, no priority information 
can be given, so every constraint is labelled with the same 
degree o1' prinrity(=l). 
(ex. 10) 
entry of CS neutral in the type lexicon: 
<conceptClass> CC snrgic N deed 
<eoneel~tSubclass> CS_neutral 
<role> R I)IRECT OI~,IECT 
<ccl> CC pathology 1 
<cc2> CC_anatomy 1 
<cc3> C C interventeqnipment 1 
<cc4> CC combi 1 
<prep 1 > I_NONE 1 
<role> R 1NI)IRI~CT OBJECT 
<ce I > CC pathology 1 
<ec2> CC anatomy 1 
<ce4> CC combi 1 
<prep 1 > I _SOURCt'; 1 
<prep2> I_SITE 1 
<role> R MEANS 
<ccl> CC anatomy 1 
<cc2> CC.intervent__cquipment 1 
<prep 1> IMEANS 1 
<role> R MANNER 
<ecl> CC surgical deed 1 
<prepl> 1 MANNER 1 
<endtype> 
If the verb has at least one of the Semantic Links of the 
entry CS neutral, it will be considered as a surgical deed 
concept: 
(ex. 11) 
.. word! de peritoneale drain intercutaan Eetunneld .. 
-peritoncale drain \[CC intervent equipment 
R I)IRECT OBJECT?\] 
-gcttmneld \[CC surgical_ _deed, CS neutral? I 
(the drain is .. connected) 
(ex. 12) 
.. wordt losgemaakt door wegboren .. 
-losgemaakt \[CC surgical deed, CS_neutral?\] 
-door wegboren \[CS_remove, R_MANNER?\] 
(.. freed by removing..) 
Vl. EVALUATION AND CONCLIISION 
By way of conch, sion wc will mention the main results 
obtained until now. MULTYI'AIA~ has not yet been 
extensively tested, yet when confi'onted with new texts, 
results look quite satisfactorily and promising. The 
lbllowing table is based upon 5 new medical reports (each 
some 200 wordtokens in length), tbe words not being a 
priori in the lexicon. 
syntax 
present Nps 56 
correctly assigned 49 
successrate 87% 
concept type assignment 
present medical concepts 121 
corrcctty assigned 114 
successrate 94% 
concept linking 
links present 53 
correctly assigned 45 
successrate 85% 
Although these results should be confirmed by flmhcr 
tests and although the restricted character of the donmin, 
no donbt, has got all inllucnce on the score, yet we hope to 
have shown that tim approach as such to 
semantic/conceptt, al tagging of medical reports seems 
both to bc promising and worth while of lilrther 
exploration. 
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