Implementing WordNet Measures of Lexical Semantic Similarity in a Fuzzy Logic Programming System

Abstract: This paper introduces techniques to integrate WordNet into a Fuzzy Logic Programming system. Since WordNet relates words but does not give graded information on the relation between them, we have implemented standard similarity measures and new directives allowing the proximity equations linking two words to be generated with an approximation degree. Proximity equations are the key syntactic structures which, in addition to a weak unification algorithm, make a flexible query-answering process possible in this kind of programming language. This addition widens the scope of Fuzzy Logic Programming, allowing certain forms of lexical reasoning, and reinforcing Natural Language Processing applications. [Under consideration in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP)]