Symbolic, Distributed, and Distributional Representations for Natural Language Processing in the Era of Deep Learning: A Survey.

Journal: Frontiers in robotics and AI
Published Date:

Abstract

Natural language is inherently a discrete symbolic representation of human knowledge. Recent advances in machine learning (ML) and in natural language processing (NLP) seem to contradict the above intuition: discrete symbols are fading away, erased by vectors or tensors called and . However, there is a strict link between distributed/distributional representations and discrete symbols, being the first an approximation of the second. A clearer understanding of the strict link between distributed/distributional representations and symbols may certainly lead to radically new deep learning networks. In this paper we make a survey that aims to renew the link between symbolic representations and distributed/distributional representations. This is the right time to revitalize the area of interpreting how discrete symbols are represented inside neural networks.

Authors

  • Lorenzo Ferrone
    Department of Enterprise Engineering, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy.
  • Fabio Massimo Zanzotto
    Department of Enterprise Engineering, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy.

Keywords

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