Classifier Combination for Contextual Idiom Detection Without Labelled Data

Linlin Li, Caroline Sporleder

Abstract: We propose a novel unsupervised approach for distinguishing literal and non-literal use of idiomatic expressions. Our model combines an unsupervised and a supervised classifier. The former bases its decision on the cohesive structure of the context and labels training data for the latter, which can then take a larger feature space into account. We show that a combination of both classifiers leads to significant improvements over using the unsupervised classifier alone.