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Discovering hyponymic knowledge patterns in English

ORCiD logo with link | Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières
ORCiD logo with link | Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

This article was made Open Access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license through payment of an APC by or on behalf of the authors.

Published online: 14 October 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/term.25022.san
Abstract
Identifying hyponymy is essential in terminology work. This article addresses the lack of a comprehensive inventory of hyponymic knowledge patterns (KPs) in English by presenting a robust methodology for their collection. Drawing on six complementary strategies — literature review, machine translation, parallel corpora, human translation, bootstrapping, and generative artificial intelligence — the study identified and validated 110 distinct English hyponymic patterns, many of which had not been previously documented. These patterns will serve to update the English version of the EcoLexicon Semantic Sketch Grammar (ESSG-en), a KP-based tool for extracting semantic relations from corpora in Sketch Engine. The findings highlight the strengths and limitations of each strategy and underscore the value of combining methods to achieve coverage. Ultimately, this research fills a significant gap by delivering the most extensive list of English hyponymic patterns to date.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Hyponymy
  • 3.Knowledge patterns
    • 3.1From knowledge patterns to knowledge-rich contexts
      • Noise
      • Polysemy
      • Anaphoric reference
      • Non-noun elements in SRs
      • Too many intervening words between the elements
      • Varying degrees of certainty
      • Unpredictable KPs
      • Domain dependency
      • Genre dependency
      • KP-based approaches can be time-consuming
      • Language variability
    • 3.2Relation extraction by means of word sketches: The ESSG project
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1The ESSG methodology
    • 4.2Collection methods
      • 4.2.1Patterns collection from literature review
      • 4.2.2Patterns collection with machine translation
      • 4.2.3Patterns collection with a parallel corpus
      • 4.2.4Patterns collection with human translation
      • 4.2.5Patterns collection by bootstrapping
      • 4.2.6Patterns collection with generative AI
    • 4.3Patterns validation and consolidation
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Knowledge patterns collection
      • 5.1.1Patterns obtained from literature review
      • 5.1.2Patterns obtained with machine translation
      • 5.1.3Patterns obtained with a parallel corpus
      • 5.1.4Patterns obtained with human translation
      • 5.1.5Patterns obtained by bootstrapping
      • 5.1.6Patterns obtained with generative AI
    • 5.2Pattern validation and consolidation
    • 5.3Final list of patterns
    • 5.4Discussion
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
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