A hybrid approach to semantic text similarity combining word embeddings and classical similarity measures
TL;DR
It is determined that the proposed hybrid model attains higher correlation with human judgment than standalone or traditional baselines, and is an efficient and scalable solution that balances computational performance with semantic accuracy for practical tasks.
Abstract
In this study, a hybrid approach to semantic text similarity combining distributed word embeddings with classical lexical similarity measures is developed. Analyzed are the limitations of modern deep learning models, namely computational overhead and weak interpretability in resource-constrained environments. Proposed is a hybrid architecture that integrates Word2Vec distributed representations with cosine and Jaccard lexical similarity metrics. Investigated is a weighted fusion mechanism that combines vector-based semantic distances with set-theoretic token overlap for robust scoring. Developed is a three-stage processing pipeline covering text preprocessing, sentence embedding generation, and similarity computation and fusion. Established is a tunable weighting parameter that experimentally balances semantic depth against lexical matching precision. Conducted are experimental evaluations on benchmark semantic textual similarity and paraphrase detection datasets using classification metrics. Determined is that the proposed hybrid model attains higher correlation with human judgment than standalone or traditional baselines. Demonstrated is a notable reduction of error rates for exact lexical matches frequently missed by vector-only models. Presented is an efficient and scalable solution that balances computational performance with semantic accuracy for practical tasks.