KORPUSE KONTEKSTIGA VÕI ILMA? SUURTE KEELEMUDELITE VÕIMEKUS TUVASTADA JA MÄRGENDIGA VARUSTADA EESTI KEELE SÕNATÄHENDUSI
WITH OR WITHOUT CORPUS DATA? LARGE LANGUAGE MODELS’ CAPABILITY TO DETECT AND LABEL WORD SENSES IN ESTONIAN

Summary/Abstract: Lexicographers occasionally face difficulties in deciding whether a particular word sense requires a usage label (e.g., colloquial). In descriptive lexicography, labels are based on empirical language data rather than on intuition. In recent decades, corpus data has become a reliable foundation for such decisions, replacing earlier reliance on individual judgment or small card indexes. However, the potential of large language models (LLMs) to assist in labeling task has only recently begun to be explored. This study investigates whether and how LLMs can support Estonian lexicographers in assigning dictionary labels to word senses. We compared the performance of three models – Claude Opus 4.1, Gemini 2.5 Pro, and GPT-4o – when asked to identify Estonian word senses and assign register and label information, using either selected contexts from the Estonian National Corpus (2023) that contained the target word or in a zero-shot setting. The LLMs’ outputs were evaluated both manually and through automated analysis. All LLMs performed more accurately when corpus data were provided, with Claude yielding the best overall results. LLMs generally handled register assignment (e.g., informal vs. neutral/formal) more effectively than sense identification. Although the adequacy of generated meanings varied, LLMs demonstrated a promising ability to detect usage variation in authentic Estonian corpus material. Claude also showed potential for automatically matching its identified senses with those in the EKI Combined Dictionary. While LLM outputs still require expert supervision, the results suggest that LLMs can assist lexicographers in reducing subjectivity and workload when determining usage labels. As of October 2025, Claude appears to be the most promising tool for Estonian.

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