A memory based approach to word sense disambiguation in Bengali using k-NN method

Abstract

Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD) is an important and challenging task in the area of Natural Language Processing (NLP) where the task is to find the correct sense of an ambiguous word given its context. There have been very few attempts on WSD in Bengali or in Indian languages. The k-Nearest-Neighbor (k-NN) algorithm is a very well known and popular method for text classification. The k-NN algorithm determines the classification of a new sample from its k nearest neighbors. In this paper, we present how k-NN algorithm can be effectively applied to the task of WSD in Bengali. The k-NN algorithm achieved an accuracy of over 71% in a WSD task in Bengali reported in this paper.