Using Linked Data to Create a Typological Knowledge Base

Abstract

In this paper, I describe the challenges in creating a Resource Description Framework (RDF) knowledge base for undertaking phonological typology. RDF is a model for data interchange that encodes representations of knowledge in a graph data structure by using sets of statements that link resource nodes via predicates that can be logically marked-up (Lassila and Swick, 1999). The model I describe uses Linked Data to combine data from disparate segment inventory databases. Once the data in these legacy databases have been made interoperable at the linguistic and computational levels, I show how additional knowledge about distinctive features is linked to the knowledge base. I call this resource the Phonetics Information Base and Lexicon (PHOIBLE, http://phoible.org) and it allows users to query segment inventories from a large number of languages at both the segment and distinctive feature levels (Moran, 2012). I then show how the knowledge base is useful for investigating questions of descriptive phonological universals, e.g. “do all languages have coronals?” and “does every phonological system have at least one front vowel or the palatal glide /j/?” (Hyman, 2008).