Chengyu cloze test

Abstract

We present a neural recommendation model for Chengyu, which is a special type of Chinese idiom. Given a query, which is a sentence with an empty slot where the Chengyu is taken out, our model will recommend the Chengyu candidate that best fits the slot context. The main challenge lies in that the literal meaning of a Chengyu is usually very different from its figurative meaning. We propose a neural approach to incorporate the definition of each Chengyu as background knowledge. Experiments on both Chengyu cloze test and coherence checking in college entrance exams show that our system achieves 89.5% accuracy on cloze test and outperforms human experts who attended competitive universities in China. We will make all of our data sets and resources publicly available as a new benchmark for research purposes.