Word sense disambiguation (WSD) and lexical disambiguation are two related but distinct concepts in natural language processing and computational linguistics.

  Word sense disambiguation refers to the process of determining the correct meaning or sense of a word in a given context. It is a fundamental problem in natural language understanding, as many words have multiple meanings, known as senses. For example, the word "bank" can refer to a financial institution or the side of a river. WSD techniques aim to identify the intended sense of a word within a specific context to improve the accuracy of language processing applications.

  Lexical disambiguation, on the other hand, is a broader term that encompasses disambiguation not only at the word level but also at the level of phrases or sentences. It deals with resolving different meanings or interpretations of lexical units within a linguistic structure. This can include disambiguating various parts of*******, such as distinguishing between noun and verb forms of a word or resolving homonymy and polysemy issues.

  In essence, WSD is a specific application of lexical disambiguation that focuses solely on determining the correct sense of a word in a given context. Lexical disambiguation, on the other hand, encompasses a wider range of disambiguation tasks that go beyond individual word senses.

  Both WSD and lexical disambiguation are crucial in various natural language processing tasks, such as machine translation, information retrieval, and question answering systems. By accurately resolving ambiguities in language, these techniques help improve the overall understanding and interpretation of text by computational systems.