# Evaluating a Multi-sense Definition Generation Model for Multiple Languages

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.07398 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.07398/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 12 Jun 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Semeval-2022 Task 1: CODWOE -- Comparing Dictionaries and Word Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.13858/) (2022)
- [DORE: A Dataset For Portuguese Definition Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.18018/) (2024)
- [IRB-NLP at SemEval-2022 Task 1: Exploring the Relationship Between Words and Their Semantic Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.06840/) (2022)
- [Multilingual Definition Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.01489/) (2025)
- [Towards Automated Lexicography: Generating and Evaluating Definitions for Learner's Dictionaries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.01842/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Most prior work on definition modeling has not accounted for polysemy, or has done so by considering definition modeling for a target word in a given context. In contrast, in this study, we propose a context-agnostic approach to definition modeling, based on multi-sense word embeddings, that is capable of generating multiple definitions for a target word. In further, contrast to most prior work, which has primarily focused on English, we evaluate our proposed approach on fifteen different datasets covering nine languages from several language families. To evaluate our approach we consider several variations of BLEU. Our results demonstrate that our proposed multi-sense model outperforms a single-sense model on all fifteen datasets.