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How do I obtain a list of compound words as nouns?

Example: polar bear. I can only detect polar as an adjective and bear as a noun. But polar bear is actually a noun. How do I obtain a free list of such?

Another example is hot dog.

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migrated from stackoverflow.com Feb 4 at 3:08

marked as duplicate by RegDwighт♦ Mar 18 at 22:41

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Use WordNet. Together with the associated relationship information you can get for WordNet in RDF format you would get the following information for 'polar bear':

wn30:synset-ice_bear-noun-1
white bear of Arctic regions
Synonyms Thalarctos maritimus, Ursus Maritimus, ice bear
--type--> wn30:synset-bear-noun-1
--memberMeronymOf--> wn30:synset-Thalarctos-noun-1

Following the Type relation further would also reveal that it's a Mammal, and an Animal

One way to try Wordnet is on my the demo page for my Natural Language Engine. Simply type 'define' and then the word you want to look up. (P.S. It may take a few seconds to restart if nobody has been there recently.)

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Ian, thanks for your help. What tool did you use? I used java version of the WordNet library. I can only load nouns,adjs,advs for now...not sure how I detect something like what you did. – nanshi Feb 2 at 9:05
I used the RDF version of WordNet. Parsed that, built an in memory graph, added my own conjugations for verbs, plurals for nouns, ... "polar bear" is in the basic Wordnet files, you just need a parser that can handle the ambiguity that exists throughout the English language. – Ian Mercer Feb 2 at 16:49
Thanks Ian. Which file you used from Wordnet to parse out "polar bear" and "hot dog"? I think I found it from data.noun, but I am not sure if it is. Also, a grep on all the files in 'dict' directory, didn't find "dim sum" – nanshi Feb 7 at 7:25
"wn30:synset-dim_sum-noun-1" is in wordnet-glossary.ttl which is part of the RDF version – Ian Mercer Feb 7 at 7:59
Thanks Ian! I will look into it :) – nanshi Feb 8 at 18:41

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