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<Paper uid="C90-2070">
  <Title>MacWhinney, B. Competition and Lexical Categoriza-</Title>
  <Section position="7" start_page="407" end_page="411" type="concl">
    <SectionTitle>
5. Other Directions of Investigation
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> We have also been investigating exploiting subregalarities in &amp;quot;intelligent dictionary reading&amp;quot;. This project involves an additional idea, namely, that one could best use a dictionary to gain lexical knowledge by bringing to bear on it a fall natural language processing capability.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> One problem we have encountered is that dictionaries are full of inaccuracies about the meaning of words. For example, even relatively good dictionaries have poor entries for the likes of determinerless nouns like &amp;quot;bed&amp;quot;. E.g., Webster's New World (Second Edition) simply lists &amp;quot;bedtime&amp;quot; as a sense of &amp;quot;bed&amp;quot;; Longman's Dietionary of Contemporary English (New Edition) uses &amp;quot;in bed&amp;quot; as an example of the ordinary noun &amp;quot;bed&amp;quot;, then explicitly lists the phrase &amp;quot;time for bed&amp;quot; as meaning &amp;quot;time to go to sleep&amp;quot;, and gives a few other determinerless usages, leaving it to the reader to infer a generalization.* However, a dictionary reader with knowledge of the subregularity mentioned above might be able to correct such deficiencies, and come up with a better meaning that the one the dictionary supplies.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> Thus, we plan to explore augmenting our intelligent dictionary reader with the ability to use subregularities to compensate for inadequate dictionary entries.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> We are also attempting to apply the same approach to acquiring the semantics of constructions. In particular, we are investigating verb-particular combinations and conventionalized noun phrases (e.g., nominal compounds). We are also looking at constructions like the ditransitive (i.e., dative alternation), which seem also to display a kind of polysemy. Specifically, Goldberg (1989, 1990) has argued that much of the data on this construction can be accounted for in terms of subclasses that are conventionally associated with the construction itself, rather than with lexical rules and transformations as proposed, for example, by Gropen et al. (1989). If so, then the techniques for the acquisition of polysemous *Longman's also defines &amp;quot;make the bed&amp;quot; as &amp;quot;make it ready for sleeping in&amp;quot;. We have no idea how to oope with such errors, but they do underscore the problem.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4">  lexical items should prove equally applicable to the acquisition of knowledge about such constructions. We are attempting to determine whether this is the case.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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