Improving Neural Models for Natural Language Processing in Russian with Synonyms

Abstract

Large-scale neural network models, including models for natural language processing, require large datasets that could be unavailable for low-resource languages or for special domains. We consider a way to approach the problem of poor variability and small size of available data for training NLP models based on augmenting the data with synonyms. We design a novel augmentation scheme that includes replacing words with synonyms, apply it to the Russian language and report improved results for the sentiment analysis task.