Unni Cathrine Eiken February 2005

• level 0: words which co-occur with the target predicate are returned
• level 1: words which occur in the same context as the target argument are returned
• level 2: words which occur in the same context as the words found in level 1 are returned
Level 0 considers the information that is directly accessible from the EPAS list; with a given
predicate as reference point, the co-occurring arguments are retrieved. Level 1 looks at the other
arguments that occur with the same predicates as the arguments retrieved in the first step.
Finally, level 2 performs the same step once again and looks at the arguments that occur in the
same contexts as the arguments collected in level 1. As a result, bundles of concepts are
produced; each concept class consisting of words that are used in the same textual context, and
therefore are likely to be semantically similar. The following example explains how the
association of argument classes is performed.
Level 0
The association method takes as its starting point a predicate from the EPAS list. For a given
predicate, the first and second arguments are listed. The nominal argument etterforsker
(investigator) occurs as argument 1 of the verbal predicate ankomme (arrive) in the text
collection. (4-6) below shows the EPAS with ankomme as predicate.
(4- 6)
ankomme,etterforsker,?
ankomme,etterforsker,åsted
arrive, investigator, ?
arrive, investigator, crime scene
Level 1
In order to find other nominal arguments that occur in the same context patterns as etterforsker,
we must look at the other EPAS in which etterforsker occurs as argument 1. This yields the
EPAS shown in (4-7) below. For the sake of the concept association, the EPAS corresponding to
adjective-noun relations in the original texts are not considered, and therefore not included in
(4-7).
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