A Simple Set of Rules for Characters and Place Recognition in French Novels

This article describes a simple system for automatically extracting and classifying named entities in French novels. The solution presented combines a set of different standalone classifiers within a meta-recognition system. The system is tested on 35 classic French novels, representing 5 million words and 3 700 names of people and places. The results demonstrate that although none of the standalone methods clearly outperform the others, their combined classification offers a robust solution in this context.