A Diachronic Computational Lexical Resource for 800 Years of Swedish

Abstract

The goal of the work presented in this chapter is to create a set of computational lexical resources, interlinked on the lexical sense level using the persistent sense identifiers designed for the Present-Day Swedish lexical resource SALDO. In this way, all the diverse linguistic information available in our individual lexical resources – modern and historical – becomes available for all resources where the interlinking has been completed. Using this mechanism, we have been able to devise a semantic search application for 19th century fiction which combines a morphological component for this language variety – Late Modern Swedish – and a lexicalsemantic resource for Present-Day Swedish through the lexical sense identifiers. At present, we are extending and cross-linking the modern lexical resources, as well as steadily integrating the 19th century resource into this emerging diachronic lexical resource. We are also working on the intricate and challenging problem of incorporating the most deviant historical language variety – Old Swedish – in this resource, which we clearly have to do before we can truthfully refer to it as a diachronic computational lexical resource for 800 years of Swedish.