In semantics and text extraction, name resolution refers to the ability of

text mining Text mining, text data mining (TDM) or text analytics is the process of deriving high-quality information from text. It involves "the discovery by computer of new, previously unknown information, by automatically extracting information from differe ...

software to determine which actual person, actor, or object a particular use of a name refers to. It can also be referred to as entity resolution.

Name resolution in simple text

For example, in the

field, software frequently needs to interpret the following text:

John gave Edward the book. He then stood up and called to John to come back into the room.

In these sentences, the software must determine whether the pronoun "he" refers to "John", or "Edward" from the first sentence. The software must also determine whether the "John" referred to in the second sentence is the same as the "John" in the first sentence, or a third person whose name also happens to be "John". Such examples apply to almost all languages, and not only English.

Name resolution across documents

Frequently, this type of name resolution is also used across documents, for example to determine whether the "George Bush" referenced in an old newspaper article as President of the United States (

George H. W. Bush George Herbert Walker BushBefore the outcome of the 2000 United States presidential election, he was usually referred to simply as "George Bush" but became more commonly known as "George H. W. Bush", "Bush Senior," "Bush 41," and even "Bush th ...

) is the same person as the "George Bush" mentioned in a separate news article years later about a man who is running for President (

George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician and businessman who was the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Bush family and the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he i ...

.) Because many people may have the same name, analysts and software must take into account substantially more information than only a name to determine whether two identical references ("George Bush") actually refer to the same specific entity or person. Name/entity resolution in text extraction and semantics is a notoriously difficult problem, in part because in many cases there is not sufficient information to make an accurate determination. Numerous partial solutions exist that rely on specific contextual clues found in the data, but there is no currently known general solution. The problem is sometimes referred to as name disambiguation and, for digital libraries, author disambiguation. For examples of software that might provide name resolution benefits, see also: * AeroText * AlchemyAPI * Attensity *

Autonomy In developmental psychology and moral, political, and bioethical philosophy, autonomy is the capacity to make an informed, uncoerced decision. Autonomous organizations or institutions are independent or self-governing. Autonomy can also be ...

* Basis Technology
Dandelion API
providing a customizable approach for name resolution using an internal

knowledge graph In knowledge representation and reasoning, a knowledge graph is a knowledge base that uses a Graph (discrete mathematics), graph-structured data model or topology to represent and operate on data. Knowledge graphs are often used to store interl ...

(built on Wikipedia, DBpedia and other sources) *

DBpedia Spotlight DBpedia (from "DB" for "database") is a project aiming to extract structured content from the information created in the Wikipedia project. This structured information is made available on the World Wide Web using OpenLink Virtuoso. DBpedia al ...

, providing a simple approach for name resolution using DBpedia and Wikipedia * NetOwl

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Name resolution Computational linguistics Tasks of natural language processing

Name resolution in simple text

Name resolution across documents

See also

References