Standards going concrete: from LMF to Morphalou

Application of the ISO standard LMF to the French CNRS lexicon Morphalou. LMF is the ISO standard for NLP lexicons (aka ISO-24613)

The Lexical Grid: Lexical Resources in Language Infrastructures

Language Resources are recognized as a central and strategic for the development of any Human Language Technology system and application product. they play a critical role as horizontal technology and have been recognized in many occasions as a priority also by national and spra-national funding a number of initiatives (such as EAGLES, ISLE, ELRA) to establish some sort of coordination of LR activities, and a number of large LR creation projects, both in the written and in the speech areas

Wiktionary: The Metalexicographic and the Natural Language Processing Perspective

Dictionaries are the main reference works for our understanding of language. They are used by humans and likewise by computational methods. So far, the compilation of dictionaries has almost exclusively been the profession of expert lexicographers. The ease of collaboration on the Web and the rising initiatives of collecting open-licensed knowledge, such as in Wikipedia, caused a new type of dictionary that is voluntarily created by large communities of Web users. This collaborative construction approach presents a new paradigm for lexicography that poses new research questions to dictionary research on the one hand and provides a very valuable knowledge source for natural language processing applications on the other hand. The subject of our research is Wiktionary, which is currently the largest collaboratively constructed dictionary project. In the first part of this thesis, we study Wiktionary from the metalexicographic perspective. Metalexicography is the scientific study of lexicography including the analysis and criticism of dictionaries and lexicographic processes. To this end, we discuss three contributions related to this area of research: (i) We first provide a detailed analysis of Wiktionary and its various language editions and dictionary structures. (ii) We then analyze the collaborative construction process of Wiktionary. Our results show that the traditional phases of the lexicographic process do not apply well to Wiktionary, which is why we propose a novel process description that is based on the frequent and continual revision and discussion of the dictionary articles and the lexicographic instructions. (iii) We perform a large-scale quantitative comparison of Wiktionary and a number of other dictionaries regarding the covered languages, lexical entries, word senses, pragmatic labels, lexical relations, and translations. We conclude the metalexicographic perspective by finding that the collaborative Wiktionary is not an appropriate replacement for expert-built dictionaries due to its inconsistencies, quality flaws, one-fits-all-approach, and strong dependence on expert-built dictionaries. However, Wiktionary's rapid and continual growth, its high coverage of languages, newly coined words, domain-specific vocabulary and non-standard language varieties, as well as the kind of evidence based on the authors' intuition provide promising opportunities for both lexicography and natural language processing. In particular, we find that Wiktionary and expert-built wordnets and thesauri contain largely complementary entries. In the second part of the thesis, we study Wiktionary from the natural language processing perspective with the aim of making available its linguistic knowledge for computational applications. Such applications require vast amounts of structured data with high quality. Expert-built resources have been found to suffer from insufficient coverage and high construction and maintenance cost, whereas fully automatic extraction from corpora or the Web often yields resources of limited quality. Collaboratively built encyclopedias present a viable solution, but do not cover well linguistically oriented knowledge as it is found in dictionaries. That is why we propose extracting linguistic knowledge from Wiktionary, which we achieve by the following three main contributions: (i) We propose the novel multilingual ontology OntoWiktionary that is created by extracting and harmonizing the weakly structured dictionary articles in Wiktionary. A particular challenge in this process is the ambiguity of semantic relations and translations, which we resolve by automatic word sense disambiguation methods. (ii) We automatically align Wiktionary with WordNet 3.0 at the word sense level. The largely complementary information from the two dictionaries yields an aligned resource with higher coverage and an enriched representation of word senses. (iii) We represent Wiktionary according to the ISO standard Lexical Markup Framework, which we adapt to the peculiarities of collaborative dictionaries. This standardized representation is of great importance for fostering the interoperability of resources and hence the dissemination of Wiktionary-based research. To this end, our work presents a foundational step towards the large-scale integrated resource UBY, which facilitates a unified access to a number of standardized dictionaries by means of a shared web interface for human users and an application programming interface for natural language processing applications. A user can, in particular, switch between and combine information from Wiktionary and other dictionaries without completely changing the software. Our final resource and the accompanying datasets and software are publicly available and can be employed for multiple different natural language processing applications. It particularly fills the gap between the small expert-built wordnets and the large amount of encyclopedic knowledge from Wikipedia. We provide a survey of previous works utilizing Wiktionary, and we exemplify the usefulness of our work in two case studies on measuring verb similarity and detecting cross-lingual marketing blunders, which make use of our Wiktionary-based resource and the results of our metalexicographic study. We conclude the thesis by emphasizing the usefulness of collaborative dictionaries when being combined with expert-built resources, which bears much unused potential

Sustainable long-term WordNet development and maintenance: Case study of the Czech WordNet

Sustainable long-term WordNet development and maintenance: Case study of the Czech WordNet Czech WordNet represents one of the first national wordnets created during the EuroWordNet and BalkaNet projects. However, the data contains various issues that affect the use of Czech WordNet in NLP applications. Since the publication of the first CzWN version, the semantic network was augmented in several phases, however, complex final editing and publishing process has not been finished. In 2017, we have started a project to evaluate and update the Czech WordNet, followed by a connection to the Collaborative Interlingual Index. In this paper, we provide an overview of Czech WordNet data updates and extensions, and present the roadmap to publish a revised version of the Czech WordNet under open license. Moreover, we introduce a developed concept for long-term updates and maintenance of the data based on crowdsourcing activities.   Zrównoważony i długafalowy proces rozwoju i utrzymania wordnetu na przykładzie wordnetu czeskiego Czeski WordNet jest jednym z pierwszych narodowych wordnetów powstałych podczas projektów EuroWordNet i BalkaNet. Jednakże dane zawierają błędy, które wpływają na używanie czeskiego wordnetu w aplikacjach NLP. Od momentu opublikowania pierwszej wersji czeskiego wordnetu sieć semantyczna została rozszerzona w kilku etapach, jednak złożony proces końcowej edycji i publikacji nie został jeszcze zakończony. W roku 2017 zaczęliśmy projekt mający na celu ocenę i aktualizację czeskiego wordnetu, a następnie połączenie go z Collaborative Interlingual Index. W danym artykule przedstawiamy ogólny zarys uaktualnień i rozszerzeń zawartości czeskiego wordnetu, a także prezentujemy plan działania, który doprowadzi do publikacji udoskonalonej wersji czeskiego wordnetu na otwartej licencji. Ponadto prezentujemy opracowaną koncepcję długoterminowych uaktualnień i utrzymania danych w oparciu o działania crowdsourcingowe

Sharing Semantic Resources

The Semantic Web is an extension of the current Web in which information, so far created for human consumption, becomes machine readable, “enabling computers and people to work in cooperation”. To turn into reality this vision several challenges are still open among which the most important is to share meaning formally represented with ontologies or more generally with semantic resources. This Semantic Web long-term goal has many convergences with the activities in the field of Human Language Technology and in particular in the development of Natural Language Processing applications where there is a great need of multilingual lexical resources. For instance, one of the most important lexical resources, WordNet, is also commonly regarded and used as an ontology. Nowadays, another important phenomenon is represented by the explosion of social collaboration, and Wikipedia, the largest encyclopedia in the world, is object of research as an up to date omni comprehensive semantic resource. The main topic of this thesis is the management and exploitation of semantic resources in a collaborative way, trying to use the already available resources as Wikipedia and Wordnet. This work presents a general environment able to turn into reality the vision of shared and distributed semantic resources and describes a distributed three-layer architecture to enable a rapid prototyping of cooperative applications for developing semantic resources

Main results of MONDILEX project

Main results of MONDILEX projectThe paper presents the results and recommendations of MONDILEX, a 7FP project that covered six Slavic languages: Bulgarian, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Slovene, and Ukrainian. The paper summarizes the research undertaken on standardisation and integration of Slavic language resources and on the establishment of a virtual organisation supporting research infrastructure for Slavic lexicography. The results should be useful for an implementation of a research infrastructure in the coming years

Terminological Methods in Lexicography: Conceptualising, Organising, and Encoding Terms in General Language Dictionaries

Os dicionários de língua geral apresentam inconsistências de uniformização e cientificidade no tratamento do conteúdo lexicográfico especializado. Analisando a presença e o tratamento de termos em dicionários de língua geral, propomos um tratamento mais uniforme e cientificamente rigoroso desse conteúdo, considerando também a necessidade de compilar e alinhar futuros recursos lexicais em consonância com padrões interoperáveis. Partimos da premissa de que o tratamento dos itens lexicais, sejam unidades lexicais (palavras em geral) ou unidades terminológicas (termos ou palavras pertencentes a determinados domínios), deve ser diferenciado, e recorremos a métodos terminológicos para tratar os termos dicionarizados. A nossa abordagem assume que a terminologia – na sua dupla dimensão linguística e conceptual – e a lexicografia, como domínios interdisciplinares, podem ser complementares. Assim, apresentamos objetivos teóricos (aperfeiçoamento da metalinguagem e descrição lexicográfica a partir de pressupostos terminológicos) e práticos (representação consistente de dados lexicográficos), que visam facilitar a organização, descrição e modelização consistente de componentes lexicográficos, nomeadamente a hierarquização das etiquetas de domínio, que são marcadores de identificação de léxico especializados. Queremos ainda facilitar a redação de definições, as quais podem ser otimizadas e elaboradas com maior precisão científica ao seguir uma abordagem terminológica no tratamento dos termos. Analisámos os dicionários desenvolvidos por três instituições académicas distintas: a Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, a Real Academia Española e a Académie Française, que representam um valioso legado da tradição lexicográfica académica europeia. A análise inicial inclui um levantamento exaustivo e a comparação das etiquetas de domínio usadas, bem como um debate sobre as opções escolhidas e um estudo comparativo do tratamento dos termos. Elaborámos, depois, uma proposta metodológica para o tratamento de termos em dicionários de língua geral, tomando como exemplo dois domínios, GEOLOGIA e FUTEBOL, extraídos da edição de 2001 do dicionário da Academia das Ciências de Lisboa. Revimos os termos selecionados de acordo com os princípios terminológicos defendidos, dando origem a sentidos especializados revistos/novos para a primeira edição digital deste dicionário. Representamos e anotamos os dados usando as especificações da TEI Lex-0, uma extensão da TEI (Text Encoding Initiative), dedicada à codificação de dados lexicográficos. Destacamos também a importância de ter etiquetas de domínio hierárquicas em vez de uma lista simples de domínios, vantajosas para a organização dos dados, correspondência e possíveis futuros alinhamentos entre diferentes recursos lexicográficos. A investigação revelou que a) os modelos estruturais dos recursos lexicais são complexos e contêm informação de natureza diversa; b) as etiquetas de domínio nos dicionários gerais da língua são planas, desequilibradas, inconsistentes e, muitas vezes, estão desatualizadas, havendo necessidade de as hierarquizar para organizar o conhecimento especializado; c) os critérios adotados para a marcação dos termos e as fórmulas utilizadas na definição são díspares; d) o tratamento dos termos é heterogéneo e formulado de diferentes formas, pelo que o recurso a métodos terminológicos podem ajudar os lexicógrafos a redigir definições; e) a aplicação de métodos terminológicos e lexicográficos interdisciplinares, e também de padrões, é vantajosa porque permite a construção de bases de dados lexicais estruturadas, concetualmente organizadas, apuradas do ponto de vista linguístico e interoperáveis. Em suma, procuramos contribuir para a questão urgente de resolver problemas que afetam a partilha, o alinhamento e vinculação de dados lexicográficos.General language dictionaries show inconsistencies in terms of uniformity and scientificity in the treatment of specialised lexicographic content. By analysing the presence and treatment of terms in general language dictionaries, we propose a more uniform and scientifically rigorous treatment of this content, considering the necessity of compiling and aligning future lexical resources according to interoperable standards. We begin from the premise that the treatment of lexical items, whether lexical units (words in general) or terminological units (terms or words belonging to particular subject fields), must be differentiated, and resort to terminological methods to treat dictionary terms. Our approach assumes that terminology – in its dual dimension, both linguistic and conceptual – and lexicography, as interdisciplinary domains, can be complementary. Thus, we present theoretical (improvement of metalanguage and lexicographic description based on terminological assumptions) and practical (consistent representation of lexicographic data) objectives that aim to facilitate the organisation, description and consistent modelling of lexicographic components, namely the hierarchy of domain labels, as they are specialised lexicon identification markers. We also want to facilitate the drafting of definitions, which can be optimised and elaborated with greater scientific precision by following a terminological approach for the treatment of terms. We analysed the dictionaries developed by three different academic institutions: the Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, the Real Academia Española and the Académie Française, which represent a valuable legacy of the European academic lexicographic tradition. The initial analysis includes an exhaustive survey and comparison of the domain labels used, as well as a debate on the chosen options and a comparative study of the treatment of the terms. We then developed a methodological proposal for the treatment of terms in general language dictionaries, exemplified using terms from two domains, GEOLOGY and FOOTBALL, taken from the 2001 edition of the dictionary of the Academia das Ciências de Lisboa. We revised the selected terms according to the defended terminological principles, giving rise to revised/new specialised meanings for the first digital edition of this dictionary. We represent and annotate the data using the TEI Lex-0 specifications, a TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) subset for encoding lexicographic data. We also highlight the importance of having hierarchical domain labels instead of a simple list of domains, which are beneficial to the data organisation itself, correspondence and possible future alignments between different lexicographic resources. Our investigation revealed the following: a) structural models of lexical resources are complex and contain information of a different nature; b) domain labels in general language dictionaries are flat, unbalanced, inconsistent and often outdated, requiring the need to hierarchise them for organising specialised knowledge; c) the criteria adopted for marking terms and the formulae used in the definition are disparate; d) the treatment of terms is heterogeneous and formulated differently, whereby terminological methods can help lexicographers to draft definitions; e) the application of interdisciplinary terminological and lexicographic methods, and of standards, is advantageous because it allows the construction of structured, conceptually organised, linguistically accurate and interoperable lexical databases. In short, we seek to contribute to the urgent issue of solving problems that affect the sharing, alignment and linking of lexicographic data

Inducing the Cross-Disciplinary Usage of Morphological Language Data Through Semantic Modelling

Despite the enormous technological advancements in the area of data creation and management the vast majority of language data still exists as digital single-use artefacts that are inaccessible for further research efforts. At the same time the advent of digitisation in science increased the possibilities for knowledge acquisition through the computational application of linguistic information for various disciplines. The purpose of this thesis, therefore, is to create the preconditions that enable the cross-disciplinary usage of morphological language data as a sub-area of linguistic data in order to induce a shared reusability for every research area that relies on such data. This involves the provision of morphological data on the Web under an open license and needs to take the prevalent diversity of data compilation into account. Various representation standards emerged across single disciplines which lead to heterogeneous data that differs with regard to complexity, scope and data formats. This situation requires a unifying foundation enabling direct reusability. As a solution to fill the gap of missing open data and to overcome the presence of isolated datasets a semantic data modelling approach is applied. Being rooted in the Linked Open Data (LOD) paradigm it pursues the creation of data as uniquely identifiable resources that are realised as URIs, accessible on the Web, available under an open license, interlinked with other resources, and adhere to Linked Data representation standards such as the RDF format. Each resource then contributes to the LOD cloud in which they are all interconnected. This unification results from ontologically shared bases that formally define the classification of resources and their relation to other resources in a semantically interoperable manner. Subsequently, the possibility of creating semantically structured data has sparked the formation of the Linguistic Linked Open Data (LLOD) research community and LOD sub-cloud containing primarily language resources. Over the last decade, ontologies emerged mainly for the domain of lexical language data which lead to a significant increase in Linked Data-based linguistic datasets. However, an equivalent model for morphological data is still missing, leading to a lack of this type of language data within the LLOD cloud. This thesis presents six publications that are concerned with the peculiarities of morphological data and the exploration of their semantic representation as an enabler of cross-disciplinary reuse. The Multilingual Morpheme Ontology (MMoOn Core) as well as an architectural framework for morphemic dataset creation as RDF resources are proposed as the first comprehensive domain representation model adhering to the LOD paradigm. It will be shown that MMoOn Core permits the joint representation of heterogeneous data sources such as interlinear glossed texts, inflection tables, the outputs of morphological analysers, lists of morphemic glosses or word-formation rules which are all equally labelled as “morphological data” across different research areas. Evidence for the applicability and adequacy of the semantic modelling entailed by the MMoOn Core ontology is provided by two datasets that were transformed from tabular data into RDF: the Hebrew Morpheme Inventory and Xhosa RDF dataset. Both further demonstrate how their integration into the LLOD cloud - by interlinking them with external language resources - yields insights that could not be obtained from the initial source data. Altogether the research conducted in this thesis establishes the foundation for an interoperable data exchange and the enrichment of morphological language data. It strives to achieve the broader goal of advancing language data-driven research by overcoming data barriers and discipline boundaries

Atti del IX Convegno Annuale dell'Associazione per l'Informatica Umanistica e la Cultura Digitale (AIUCD). La svolta inevitabile: sfide e prospettive per l'Informatica Umanistica

Proceedings of the IX edition of the annual AIUCD conferenc

Atti del IX Convegno Annuale AIUCD. La svolta inevitabile: sfide e prospettive per l'Informatica Umanistica.

La nona edizione del convegno annuale dell'Associazione per l'Informatica Umanistica e la Cultura Digitale (AIUCD 2020; Milano, 15-17 gennaio 2020) ha come tema “La svolta inevitabile: sfide e prospettive per l'Informatica Umanistica”, con lo specifico obiettivo di fornire un'occasione per riflettere sulle conseguenze della crescente diffusione dell’approccio computazionale al trattamento dei dati connessi all’ambito umanistico. Questo volume raccoglie gli articoli i cui contenuti sono stati presentati al convegno. A diversa stregua, essi affrontano il tema proposto da un punto di vista ora più teorico-metodologico, ora più empirico-pratico, presentando i risultati di lavori e progetti (conclusi o in corso) che considerino centrale il trattamento computazionale dei dati