Abstract
We introduce a new type of lexical structure called lexical system, an interoperable model that can feed both monolingual and multilingual language resources. We begin with a formal characterization of lexical systems as simple directed graphs, solely made up of nodes corresponding to lexical entities and links. To illustrate our approach, we present data borrowed from a lexical system that has been generated from the French DiCo database. We later explain how the compilation of the original dictionary-like database into a net-like one has been made possible. Finally, we discuss the potential of the proposed lexical structure for designing multilingual lexical resources.
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Notes
It is no coincidence if WordNet so-called lexicographer files give a textual perspective on lexical items that is dictionary-like. The unit of description is the synset, however, and not the lexical unit. (See WordNet documentation on lexicographer files.)
See Trippel 2006 for a comparison between annotation and lexicon graphs.
On collocations and lexical functions, see Sect. 2 below.
More precisely, \({\tt Oper12}\) denotes support verbs that take the 1st actant of the headword as subject, the headword itself as 1st complement and the 2nd actant of the headword as 2nd complement; for instance: \(X\ {\mathbf{ feels}}/{\mathbf{has\;}}resentment\ for\ Y.\)
The DiCouèbe webpage is at: http://www.olst.umontreal.ca/dicouebe. Another DiCo datastructure-cum-interface is available: the DiCoPop (http://olst.ling.umontreal.ca/dicopop). The DiCoPop’s datastructure is one step closer to that of LSs. It is used to implement alternate modes of navigation through DiCo data as well as to automatically generate general public dictionary entries of the Lexique actif du français type (Mel’čuk and Polguère 2007).
The code for compiling the DiCo into an LS and for generating GraphML and HTML exports is written in SWI-Prolog.
We underline hypertext links. Lexical function applications listed here correspond to French collocations that mean, respectively, to put in the background, to indict someone (literally in French ‘to put someone in accusation’), to anchor a vessel (literally in French ‘to put a vessel at the anchor’), to put someone in anguish and to keep something in a cupboard.
It is worth noticing that good English-French dictionaries, such as the Collins-Robert, offer several different translations in this particular case. Additionally, their translations do not apply to sibling as such, but rather to siblings or to expressions such as someone’s siblings, to be siblings, etc.
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Acknowledgements
This research is supported by a grant from the FQRSC Quebec agency. We are very grateful to Sylvain Kahane, Marie-Claude L’Homme, Igor Mel’čuk, Ophélie Tremblay, four MLRI 2006 reviewers and three reviewers of Language Resources and Evaluation for their comments on a preliminary version of the paper. Special thanks to Sylvain Kahane and Jacques Steinlin for their invaluable work on the DiCo SQL, that made our own research possible.
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Polguère, A. Lexical systems: graph models of natural language lexicons. Lang Resources & Evaluation 43, 41–55 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10579-008-9078-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10579-008-9078-4