Creating Similarity: Lateral Thinking for Vertical Similarity Judgments

Tony Veale, Guofu Li

Abstract: Just as observing is more than just seeing, comparing is far more than mere matching. It takes understanding, and even inventiveness, to discern a useful basis for judging two ideas as similar in a particular context, especially when our perspective is shaped by an act of linguistic creativity such as metaphor, simile or analogy. Structured resources such as WordNet offer a convenient hierarchical means for converging on a common ground for comparison, but offer little support for the divergent thinking that is needed to creatively view one concept as another. We describe such a means here, by showing how the web can be used to harvest many divergent views for many familiar ideas. These lateral views complement the vertical views of WordNet, and support a system for idea exploration called Thesaurus Rex. We show also how Thesaurus Rex supports a novel, generative similarity measure for WordNet.