“Beijing frowns and washington pays close attention” computer processing of relations between geographical proper names in foreign affairs

Abstract

We present results of the project Prolex. The aim of the project is the automated analysis of proper names, especially a description of relations between different proper names in a text. The system currently works with geographical proper names (place names, derived adjectives and names of inhabitants) in French. It consists of a database containing specific types of proper names and relations between the different names. Using these names and relations, the program can group the proper names appearing in a text that may belong together (such as Beijing-Chinese-Pekinese-China; American-United States-Washington). This is done by constructing an association matrix between them and by computing the transitive closure of this Boolean matrix. The method is explained with an example.