Multi-word expressions in biomedical abstracts and their plain English adaptations

Sergei Bagdasarov, Elke Teich


Abstract
This study analyzes the use of multi-word expressions (MWEs), prefabricated sequences of words (e.g. in this case, this means that, healthcare service, follow up) in biomedical abstracts and their plain language adaptations. While English academic writing became highly specialized and complex from the late 19th century onwards, recent decades have seen a rising demand for a lay-friendly language in scientific content, especially in the health domain, to bridge a communication gap between experts and laypersons. Based on previous research showing that MWEs are easier to process than non-formulaic word sequences of comparable length, we hypothesize that they can potentially be used to create a more reader-friendly language. Our preliminary results suggest some significant differences between complex and plain abstracts when it comes to the usage patterns and informational load of MWEs.
Anthology ID:
2024.nlp4dh-1.46
Volume:
Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Natural Language Processing for Digital Humanities
Month:
November
Year:
2024
Address:
Miami, USA
Editors:
Mika Hämäläinen, Emily Öhman, So Miyagawa, Khalid Alnajjar, Yuri Bizzoni
Venue:
NLP4DH
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
483–488
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.nlp4dh-1.46
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Sergei Bagdasarov and Elke Teich. 2024. Multi-word expressions in biomedical abstracts and their plain English adaptations. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Natural Language Processing for Digital Humanities, pages 483–488, Miami, USA. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Multi-word expressions in biomedical abstracts and their plain English adaptations (Bagdasarov & Teich, NLP4DH 2024)
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PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.nlp4dh-1.46.pdf