Data Mining as a Method for Linguistic Analysis: Dutch Diminutives
Walter M. P. Daelemans, Peter Berck, Steven A. Gillis · Folia Linguistica · 1997
We propose to use data mining techniques (inductive techniques for the automatic acquisition of comprehensible knowledge from data) as a method in linguistic analysis. In the past, such techniques have mainly been used in linguistic engineering applications to solve knowledge acquisition bottlenecks. In this paper we show that they can also assist in linguistic theory formation by providing a new tool for the evaluation of linguistic hypotheses, for the extraction of rules from corpora, and for the discovery of useful linguistic categories. By applying a rule induction method to a particular linguistic task (diminutive formation in Dutch) we show that data mining techniques can be used to test linguistic hypotheses about this morphological proces, and to discover interesting morphological and phonological rules and categories.