EuroWordNet: A multilingual database with lexical semantic networks

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-iv

   PDF

2. Introduction to EuroWordNet

   • Piek Vossen

   Pages 1-17

3. The Linguistic Design of the EuroWordNet Database

   • Antonietta Alonge, Nicoletta Calzolari, Piek Vossen, Laura Bloksma, Irene Castellon, Maria Antonia Marti et al.

   Pages 19-43

4. The Top-Down Strategy for Building EuroWordNet: Vocabulary Coverage, Base Concepts and Top Ontology

   • Horacio Rodríguez, Salvador Climent, Piek Vossen, Laura Bloksma, Wim Peters, Antonietta Alonge et al.

   Pages 45-80

5. Compatibility in Interpretation of Relations in EuroWordNet

   • Piek Vossen, Laura Bloksma, Antonietta Alonge, Elisabetta Marinai, Carol Peters, Irene Castellon et al.

   Pages 81-112

6. Applying EuroWordNet to Cross-Language Text Retrieval

   • Julio Gonzalo, Felisa Verdejo, Carol Peters, Nicoletta Calzolari

   Pages 113-135

7. A Semantic Network of English: The Mother of All WordNets

   • Christiane Fellbaum

   Pages 137-148

8. Cross-linguistic Alignment of Wordnets with an Inter-Lingual-Index

   • Wim Peters, Piek Vossen, Pedro Díez-Orzas, Geert Adriaens

   Pages 149-179

This book describes the main objective of EuroWordNet, which is the building of a multilingual database with lexical semantic networks or wordnets for several European languages. Each wordnet in the database represents a language-specific structure due to the unique lexicalization of concepts in languages. The concepts are inter-linked via a separate Inter-Lingual-Index, where equivalent concepts across languages should share the same index item. The flexible multilingual design of the database makes it possible to compare the lexicalizations and semantic structures, revealing answers to fundamental linguistic and philosophical questions which could never be answered before. How consistent are lexical semantic networks across languages, what are the language-specific differences of these networks, is there a language-universal ontology, how much information can be shared across languages? First attempts to answer these questions are given in the form of a set of shared or common Base Concepts that has been derived from the separate wordnets and their classification by a language-neutral top-ontology. These Base Concepts play a fundamental role in several wordnets. Nevertheless, the database may also serve many practical needs with respect to (cross-language) information retrieval, machine translation tools, language generation tools and language learning tools, which are discussed in the final chapter.
The book offers an excellent introduction to the EuroWordNet project for scholars in the field and raises many issues that set the directions for further research in semantics and knowledge engineering.

• classification
• knowledge
• language
• learning
• machine translation
• ontology
• semantics

`[...]EuroWordNet is an essential resource for any research groups planning versions of WordNet for their own languages. With effort, they will find pragmatic solutions to most of the problems they are likely to encounter, and I would cdertainly recommend it to that specialist audience.'
Natural Language Engineering, 9:4 (2003)

• Faculty of Humanities, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

  Piek Vossen

Policies and ethics