VoC Mine - Synonym dictionaries

Overview

The concept of synonyms revolves around the idea that you might have several words in the query which have a very similar meaning to them but are separated into different words. In case you want to semantically unify these separated words into one entity you will need to use a synonym dictionary.

Synonym dictionary consists of a so-called "cornerstone synonym" which is the name of the lemma you will see displayed as the synonym name in the synonym list and also as a lemma in different lemmata view modes (cloud, table, chart) as well as in the filter view.

Each non-cornerstone synonym works like an alias to the cornerstone synonym. The resulting dictionary gets the title from the cornerstone synonym and consists of all synonyms (aliases). For example, you can create a synonym dictionary with a cornerstone synonym of "friendly". You can then add "kind" and "pleasant" to the synonym list and this will allow to group these lemmata into one called "friendly".

Please see "Scope of applicability" section to see how this functionality is integrated into the product.

List dictionaries

Allows to edit or delete existing dictionaries

Add dictionary

Allows to add a new dictionary

To add a synonym, click the wide blue "Add synonym" button. You will see that the first synonym is highlighted with light blue. This means that this is a cornerstone synonym.

Click the "Add synonym" button again to add more synonyms to the dictionary.

Click the ­ button to change the cornerstone synonym in the dictionary.

Scope of applicability

Lemmata view

When applied, the aforementioned dictionary will make lemmata "kind" and "pleasant" in "Lemmata" view to be grouped with the cornerstone "friendly" synonym and will be also shown as a sum of all occurrences of these lemmata.

Example: 340 occurrences of lemma "kind" + 120 occurrences of lemma "pleasant" + 785 occurrences of lemma "friendly" will result in 1245 occurrences of synonym "friendly" which will be displayed as a single lemma "friendly" in lemmata views: cloud, table, chart.

Lemmata to include/exclude

When any of the lemma is applied to lemmata to include/exclude filter, each text case which includes any of the aliases of the synonym (including lemma of the synonym itself) will be included to the selection of filtered text cases.

Example: if you enable the aforementioned dictionary and add "pleasant" to "lemmata to include" filter then each text case which contains lemmata "pleasant", "kind" and "friendly" will be included to the selection of filtered text cases.

Other

Please note that synonym dictionaries don't affect actual lemmata count and lemmata list (if included) in the export files. Synonym dictionaries don't affect the lemmata displayed in the text case details.