22.1194, Qs: Synonym Tests in Many Languages

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LINGUIST List: Vol-22-1194. Fri Mar 11 2011. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 22.1194, Qs: Synonym Tests in Many Languages

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1)
Date: 07-Mar-2011
From: Jussi Karlgren [jussi at sics.se]
Subject: Synonym Tests in Many Languages
 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2011 15:37:43
From: Jussi Karlgren [jussi at sics.se]
Subject: Synonym Tests in Many Languages

E-mail this message to a friend:
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We would like to evaluate a vocabulary learning mechanism using 
synonym (or antonym) tests for several languages - tests such as the 
TOEFL vocabulary section, e.g. 

To evaluate the generality and coverage of a semantic word space 
model, my colleagues and myself have developed in number of 
research projects and now are in the process of moving to further 
languages and to potential industrial use. We would like to test it on 
multiple-choice synonym tests such as those typically found as sections 
in admission tests to higher education (or e.g. in TOEFL and similar L2 
tests). 

An ideal test would have a number of questions which consist of a 
target word and a number of alternatives from which one is to be 
selected as the best synonym for the target word - and we would of 
course prefer to have the correct answers, for languages we are not 
familiar with ourselves :-).

We have such tests for English and Swedish but find it is somewhat 
difficult to locate publicly available tests for other languages - and we 
would for methodological reasons prefer not to build tests ourselves 
from lexical resources. Is there an accessible collection of synonym 
tests somewhere?

If you have such a test for some language, we would be very happy to 
test our system's performance on it!

Jussi Karlgren
Gavagai  /   SICS
Stockholm 

Linguistic Field(s): Language Acquisition
                     Lexicography
                     Semantics
                     Text/Corpus Linguistics


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