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Methodology and construction of the Basque WordNet

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Abstract

Semantic interpretation of language requires extensive and rich lexical knowledge bases (LKB). The Basque WordNet is a LKB based on WordNet and its multilingual counterparts EuroWordNet and the Multilingual Central Repository. This paper reviews the theoretical and practical aspects of the Basque WordNet lexical knowledge base, as well as the steps and methodology followed in its construction. Our methodology is based on the joint development of wordnets and annotated corpora. The Basque WordNet contains 32,456 synsets and 26,565 lemmas, and is complemented by a hand-tagged corpus comprising 59,968 annotations.

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Notes

  1. In order to see the specific analysis and the conclusions drawn from it, refer to (Pociello, 2008).

  2. At http://www.globalwordnet.org.

  3. The hypernymy/hyponymy relation is also referred as the subset/superset relation.

  4. All the expressions have been taken from WordNet 3.0 (http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn), with some editing in synsets, literals and glosses due to space limitations.

  5. We have consulted Google Scholar in September 2010. Moreover, a WordNet bibliography with more than 400 papers is maintained at http://lit.csci.unt.edu/~wordnet/.

  6. http://wordnet.princeton.edu/.

  7. We use WordNet (upper case) for the original Princeton WordNet, while we use wordnet (lower case) for the rest.

  8. http://catalog.elra.info/.

  9. Although top ontologies classify a limited number of synsets, the synsets below them can also inherit the classification.

  10. http://www.globalwordnet.org/gwa/gwa_base_concepts.htm.

  11. Note that the texts included in EuSemCor were chosen independently from the English SemCor.

  12. Given that Basque is an agglutinative language, it has a higher lemma/word rate than English. Estimates in parallel corpora allow us to think that 300,000 words in Basque are comparable to 500,000 words in English.

  13. Nouns in the corpus were ordered according to frequency, from most to least frequent. The editor follows this order to select words. That way it is possible to ensure that the most frequent nouns are properly edited and tagged.

  14. The reasons for choosing these dictionaries should be pointed out: firstly, we were given the chance to use them electronically, because of the close contacts the IXA Group has with the dictionary makers; and secondly, because the dictionaries are widely used for specialised (Euskalterm) and general purposes.

  15. The whole semantic class of the example has 22 hyponyms, but in the example only the direct hyponyms of the hyponym merrymaking have been given. The number of literals of the synsets has also been reduced.

  16. http://catalog.elra.info/.

  17. Basque WordNet: http://ixa2.si.ehu.es/mcr/wei.html. Basque SemCor: http://sisx04.si.ehu.es:8080/EuSemCor.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Elhuyar R&D, Zelai Haundi kalea, 3. Osinalde Industrialdea, 20170, Usurbil, Basque Country

    Elisabete Pociello

  2. IXA NLP Research Group, 649 pk, 20080, Donostia, Basque Country

    Eneko Agirre & Izaskun Aldezabal

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  1. Elisabete Pociello
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  2. Eneko Agirre
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  3. Izaskun Aldezabal
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Correspondence to Elisabete Pociello.

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Pociello, E., Agirre, E. & Aldezabal, I. Methodology and construction of the Basque WordNet. Lang Resources & Evaluation 45, 121–142 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10579-010-9131-y

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