Lexical Database Research Articles

The ASL-LEX 2.0 Project: A Database of Lexical and Phonological Properties for 2,723 Signs in American Sign Language.

ASL-LEX is a publicly available, large-scale lexical database for American Sign Language (ASL). We report on the expanded database (ASL-LEX 2.0) that contains 2,723 ASL signs. For each sign, ASL-LEX now includes a more detailed phonological description, phonological density and complexity measures, frequency ratings (from deaf signers), iconicity ratings (from hearing non-signers and deaf signers), transparency (“guessability”) ratings (from non-signers), sign and videoclip durations, lexical class, and more. We document the steps used to create ASL-LEX 2.0 and describe the distributional characteristics for sign properties across the lexicon and examine the relationships among lexical and phonological properties of signs. Correlation analyses revealed that frequent signs were less iconic and phonologically simpler than infrequent signs and iconic signs tended to be phonologically simpler than less iconic signs. The complete ASL-LEX dataset and supplementary materials are available at https://osf.io/zpha4/ and an interactive visualization of the entire lexicon can be accessed on the ASL-LEX page: http://asl-lex.org/.

AWN-similarity: Towards developing free open-source frameworks for measuring Arabic semantic similarity under Windows / Linux operating systems

Arabic is a highly systematic language where its words exhibit elegant and rigorous logic. The field of Arabic word semantic similarity becomes more challenging due to its higher complexity and subtlety. This research is concerned with investigating the development of free open-source frameworks containing packages to calculate the semantic similarity between two Arabic words or concepts. These packages are known as AWN-ConceptSimilarity and AWN-WordSimilarity. The developed packages implement seven semantic similarity algorithms. One of these algorithms was proposed for Arabic and the rest were proposed for English where successfully adapted to Arabic using an Arabic lexical database, Arabic wordnet. The functionality of the developed packages is validated using two-word similarity benchmarks datasets previously produced for Arabic. The results of the validation process indicate that the developed frameworks represent an important contribution to the Arabic semantic similarity field. Moreover, the developed packages are reliable to use and embed them with Arabic researchers' projects for improving or comparing their methodologies.

AWN-similarity: Towards developing free open-source frameworks for measuring Arabic semantic similarity under Windows / Linux operating systems

Arabic is a highly systematic language where its words exhibit elegant and rigorous logic. The field of Arabic word semantic similarity becomes more challenging due to its higher complexity and subtlety. This research is concerned with investigating the development of free open-source frameworks containing packages to calculate the semantic similarity between two Arabic words or concepts. These packages are known as AWN-ConceptSimilarity and AWN-WordSimilarity. The developed packages implement seven semantic similarity algorithms. One of these algorithms was proposed for Arabic and the rest were proposed for English where successfully adapted to Arabic using an Arabic lexical database, Arabic wordnet. The functionality of the developed packages is validated using two-word similarity benchmarks datasets previously produced for Arabic. The results of the validation process indicate that the developed frameworks represent an important contribution to the Arabic semantic similarity field. Moreover, the developed packages are reliable to use and embed them with Arabic researchers' projects for improving or comparing their methodologies.

Construcción de un diccionario combinatorio de inglés biomédico

El objetivo de este artículo es presentar el proceso de gestación de SciE-Lex, un diccionario combinatorio de términos generales frecuentemente utilizados en inglés biomédico, que nació con el propósito de ayudar a los científicos españoles a redactar artículos científicos en inglés. Como proyecto lexicográfico se integra plenamente en la corriente léxico-gramatical que subraya la estrecha relación entre el léxico y la gramática. Su desarrollo ha venido marcado por tres etapas. En la primera, SciE-Lex proporciona, además del equivalente en español de cada entrada, información morfosintáctica y combinatoria, ilustrada con ejemplos y con notas de uso. En una segunda fase añadimos expresiones prefabricadas e información explícita acerca de su variabilidad, composición, funcionamiento y distribución en el artículo biomédico. Finalmente, en una tercera etapa, aun en desarrollo, nos proponemos introducir la semántica de marcos para establecer relaciones sintáctico-semánticas entre los distintos términos que pertenecen al mismo marco.

TuLeD (Tup\xedan lexical database): introducing a database of a South American language family

The last two decades witnessed a rapid growth of publicly accessible online language resources. This has allowed for valuable data on lesser known languages to become available. Such resources provide linguists with opportunities for advancing their research. Yet despite the proliferation of lexical and morphological databases, the ca. 456 languages spoken in South America are poorly represented, particularly the Tupían family, which is the largest on the continent. This paper therefore introduces and discusses TuLeD, a lexical database exclusively devoted to a South American language family. It provides a comprehensive list of lexical items presented in a unified transcription for all languages with cognacy assignment and relevant (cultural or linguistic) notes. One of the main goals of TuLeD is to become a full-fledged database and a benchmark for linguistic studies on South American languages in general and the Tupían family in particular.

WordNet–ONLINE LEKSIK MA'LUMOTLAR BAZASI

WordNet is a large lexical database of English. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and suffixes are grouped into a set of cognitive synonyms (syncs), each of which represents a separate concept. Synsets are interconnected using conceptual-semantic and lexical relationships. The resulting network of meaningful words and concepts is managed using a browser. WordNet is also open to the public for download. The WordNet structure is a useful tool fo r the process of computer linguistics and natural languages.

The Analysis of Frequency Terms Used in Rating Scales

The purpose of this paper is to provide a contemporary analysis of frequency terms commonly used in rating scales that are based on differing degrees of frequency with which events happen. A total of 20 frequency terms was analyzed using empirical data as well as employing a lexical database. Use of clearly separable frequency terms is imperative for the construction of a set of rating scales as an effective measuring instrument.

Sources and steps of corpus lemmatization

Abstract This article describes the steps and results of the lemmatization of the derived anomalous verbs of Old English. The data have been retrieved from The Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, searched through the lexical database from the Nerthus Project called Norna. The methodology comprises several steps combining automatic searches on the lemmatizer and manual revision. Part of the results, including the verbs starting with the letters A to H, are compared with the Dictionary of Old English, while the rest of the lemmas are checked with the standard Old English dictionaries (Clark-Hall, Sweet and Bosworth-Toller). The discussion leads to the conclusion that the lemmatization of the verbs of Old English, a language with a remarkable degree of spelling variation, requires considerable manual revision. However, the progressive improvement of automatic searches, based on the comparison of the initial results with the available lexicographical sources, minimizes the need for manual adjustment.

Hypernymy in WordNet, Its Role in WSD and Its Limitations

This paper closely analysed and depicted the role of the hyponymy that is used in the lexical database called the Word Net to relate the words semantically with a relation ... Is a kind of.... The relation has very important role for disambiguating the senses of a polysemy word in any natural language and is, therefore, massively used in knowledge-based Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD) approaches. However, the limitation of this relation is not so cared about. In many cases, the use of the hypernymy does not only mean nothing for disambiguation but also it increases only the computational effort for the system. The improper use of hypernymy is very costly. In some cases, which are described later, the use of this relation even decreases the accuracy of the WSD approaches.

Semantic primes in historical languages. The identification of the Old English exponent for DO

This journal article follows the research line opened on the search for semantic primes’ exponents in Old English within the frame of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory (Goddard 1997, 2012; Goddard and Wierzbicka 2002). The aim of this study is to complete the line of research on prime identification opened on the category Actions, events, movement, contact by establishing the Old English exponent of the prime DO. With this purpose, this paper discusses the adequacy of different OE verbs as possible prime exponent on the basis of textual frequency, morphology, semantics and syntactic complementation. Relevant data of analysis have been retrieved mainly from the lexical database of Old English Nerthus, the Dictionary of Old English (Healey et al. 2018) and the Dictionary of Old English Corpus (Healey et al. 2009).

EFL Learners’ Comprehension of Scalar Emotion Verbs

This study investigated EFL learners’ comprehension of scalar properties of three types of emotion verbs, namely, fear type, liking and disliking emotion verbs and compare their performance with instructors and native speakers of English. The participants were 38 non-native pre-service teachers from ELT department at a state university in Turkey, 11 ELT instructors at different universities and 10 native speakers from the USA and the UK. The data were collected through a scale construction task according to participants’ judgements on scalar emotion verbs in terms of their relative order on a linear scale. The results revealed that in terms of constructing consistent scales with with previously determined scales in literatutre, pre-service teachers performed poorly for fear-type and disliking emotion verbs, they were partly successful in constructing consistent scales for liking verbs. It was also found that similarly instructors performed poorly in constructing scales for fear-type and disliking verbs, but they were better than pre-service teachers. They were also successful in constructing scales for liking verbs. Native speakers were successful in fear-type and liking verbs; however, like non-native participants, they performed poorly in constructing consistent scales for disliking verbs. This means that there may be cross-cultural differences among participants’ judgement of emotion verbs on a linear scale in terms of their intensity. This study may provide valuable information for the studies on lexical resources (e.g., VerbNet, WordNet etc.) Previous studies (e.g. Fellbaum & Mathieu,2014; Sheinman, & Tokunaga, 2009) show a way to represent the scalar properties of emotion verbs in WordNet, and other possible extensions to additional verb families can cause a more subtle semantic analysis of emotion verbs in lexical databases with potential benefits for automatic inferencing, language pedagogy and translation. This study may contribute to semantic analysis of emotion verbs in lexical databases. It may also provide some implications for students, language teachers, and policy makers in terms of vocabulary learning and teaching.

The age-related positivity effect: forgetting the negative and/or remembering the positive? An inter-task study

A growing number of studies have shown that, compared to young adults, older adults better remember positive information than negative information. However, it is not clear whether this age-related positivity effect relies on an increase in positive information memory and/or on a decrease in negative information memory. Thus, we aimed to study the specific mechanisms underlying the age-related positivity effect in different memory tasks. To do so, we used an emotional word memory paradigm including immediate free recall, recognition and delayed free recall tasks. Forty-five young adults (m =20.0 years) and 45 older adults (m = 69.2 years) native French speakers participated. Thirty-six low French words, including 12 negative (e.g. égout), 12 positive (e.g. lagune) and 12 neutral (e.g. notion) words were selected from an emotional lexical database (Gobin et al. 2017). For the recognition task, 36 new words were selected. The results showed that the age-related positivity effect specifically depended on a decrease in negativity preference (i.e. the comparison between negative and neutral words) in older adults, in comparison with young adults, both in immediate and delayed free recall tasks. Indeed, in these tasks, young adults recalled more negative than neutral words whereas there was no difference in older adults. In recognition task, no age-related positivity effect has been observed. Moreover, the results showed that, in immediate recall, the higher the older adults memory abilities, the lower their negativity preference. This correlation was not significant in delayed recall. These results suggest that, when compared with young adults, older adults disengage from negative words processing through costly cognitive processes. A small magnitude of negativity preference would indicate good maintenance of memory abilities. Results are discussed in the framework of the socioemotional selectivity theory.

Semantic frames and semantic networks in the Health Science Corpus

The aim of this paper is to apply frame semantics principles to the analysis of a specialized corpus, the Health Science Corpus, implemented in the lexical database SciE-Lex. Taking FrameNet as the basis for this research, I will assign frame semantic features to Scie-Lex data in order to highlight the shared semantic and syntactic background of the related words in the biomedical register, give motivation to their patterns of collocates and establish frame-based semantic networks of related lexical units.

Slipping Through the Cracks in e-Lexicography

Abstract Despite the remarkable advances made in recent years to facilitate the lexicographer’s work of interpreting and synthesizing the complexity of language uncovered by corpora, an uncritical use of cutting-edge corpus tools and resources can instill a false sense of assurance. In this paper, authentic examples pertaining to wordlist use, collocation research and example selection that arose when compiling a real-world lexical database are discussed through the lens of problems that can easily slip through the cracks in e-lexicography. In doing so, we emphasize the importance of solid training and sound lexicographic judgment when using corpora, corpus tools and corpus-derived resources, and provide an opportunity to reflect on how e-lexicography can be further refined in the future.

Dictionary of Modern Slovene

The ability to process language data has become fundamental to the development of technologies in various areas of human life in the digital world. The development of digitally readable linguistic resources, methods, and tools is, therefore, also a key challenge for the contemporary Slovene language. This challenge has been recognized in the Slovene language community both at the professional and state level and has been the subject of many activities over the past ten years, which will be presented in this paper. The idea of a comprehensive dictionary database covering all levels of linguistic description in modern Slovene, from the morphological and lexical levels to the syntactic level, has already formulated within the framework of the European Social Fund’s Communication in Slovene (2008-2013) project; the Slovene Lexical Database was also created within the framework of this project. Two goals were pursued in designing the Slovene Lexical Database (SLD): creating linguistic descriptions of Slovene intended for human users that would also be useful for the machine processing of Slovene. Ever since the construction of the first Slovene corpus, it has become evident that there is a need for a description of modern Slovene based on real language data, and that it is necessary to understand the needs of language users to create useful language reference works. It also became apparent that only the digital medium enables the comprehensiveness of language description and that the design of the database must be adapted to it from the start. Also, the description must follow best practices as closely as possible in terms of formats and international standards, as this enables the inclusion of Slovene into a wider network of resources, such as Open Linked Data, babelNet and ELExIS. Due to time pressures and trends in lexicography, procedures to automate the extraction of linguistic data from corpora and the inclusion of crowdsourcing into the lexicographic process were taken into consideration. Following the essential idea of creating an all-inclusive digital dictionary database for Slovene, a few independent databases have been created over the past two years: the Collocations Dictionary of Modern Slovene, and the automatically generated Thesaurus of Modern Slovene, both of which also exist as independent online dictionary portals. One of the novelties that we put forward together with both dictionaries is the ‘responsive dictionary’ concept, which includes crowdsourcing methods. Ultimately, the Digital Dictionary Database provides all (other) levels of linguistic description: the morphological level with the Sloleks database upgrade, the phraseological level with the construction of a multi-word expressions lexicon, and the syntactic level with the formalization of Slovene verb valency patterns. Each of these databases contains its specific language data that will ultimately be included in the comprehensive Slovene Digital Dictionary Database, which will represent basic linguistic descriptions of Slovene both for the human and machine user.

O PROJEKCIE KORPUSU POLSZCZYZNY DO 1500 ROKU On the Corpus of Polish until 1500 project

This paper presents the assumptions of the Corpus of Polish until 1500, which is being developed as part of the project titled Baza leksykalna średniowiecznej polszczyzny (do 1500 roku). Fleksja (Lexical Database of Medieval Polish (until 1500). Infl ection). It introduces the fundamental objectives of the project, namely preparing an infl ectional description of all (infl ected) words from the time until 1500 and building a morphosyntactically annotated collection of texts from the same period. Afterwards, the authors discuss the present digital collections of Old Polish texts. In the main part of the paper, they present the criteria for selecting sources for the Corpus under creation and their elaboration methods, which refer to the solutions developed in the Electronic Corpus of Polish Texts from the 17th and 18th centuries (until 1772). Their major modifi cations aimed to adapt the structural and morphosyntactic annotations for the purpose of describing Mediaeval Polish are discussed on selected examples.

The massive auditory lexical decision database: Acoustic analyses of a large-scale, single speaker corpus

The massive auditory lexical decision database: Acoustic analyses of a large-scale, single speaker corpus

Measuring semantic relatedness between words using related synsets in African Wordnet

Words should not be treated as if all they do is fulfil roles; they can also have relationships. In our everyday talk, we normally give the meanings of words in terms of their relationships. The approach for measuring semantic relatedness between words is determined by means of a set of words that are closely related to them, and these are normally referred to as the set of determiner words. This article examines the measures of semantic relatedness to which words are associated by means of the variety of types of semantic relationships – such as synonymy, hyponymy, function and association. This relationship is considered within the context of African Wordnet (AWN), which provides South African indigenous languages with a platform to access a machine-readable lexical database organised by meaning. This article argues that computing semantic relatedness using African Wordnet could be helpful in developing an understanding of the meaning of related words for use in different African languages.

TechWord: Development of a technology lexical database for structuring textual technology information based on natural language processing

The role of text mining based on technological documents such as patents is important in the research field of technology intelligence for technology R&D planning. In addition, WordNet, an English-based lexical database, is widely used for pre-processing text data such as word lemmatization and synonym search. However, technological vocabulary information is complex and specific, and WordNet’s ability to analyze technological information is limited in its reflecting technological features. Thus, to improve the text mining performance of technological information, this study proposes a methodology for designing a TechWord-based lexical database that is based on the lexical characteristics of technological words that are differentiated from general words. To do this, we define TechWord, a technology lexical information, and construct a TechSynset, a synonym set between TechWords. First, through dependency parsing between words, TechWord, a unit word that describes a technology, is structured and identifies nouns and verbs. The importance of connectivity is investigated by a network centrality index analysis based on the dependency relations of words. Subsequently, to search for synonyms suitable for the target technology domain, a TechSynset is constructed through synset information, with an additional analysis that calculates cosine similarity based on a word embedding vector. Applying the proposed methodology to the actual technology-related information analysis, we collect patent data on the technological fields of the automotive field, and present the results of the TechWord and TechSynset. This study improves technological information-based text mining by structuring the word-to-word link information in technological documents based on an automated process.

Dialects or languages: A corpus-based quantitative approach to lexical variation in common signs in Chinese Sign Language (CSL)

Based on the quantitative analyses of 78,532 sign tokens generated in the lexical elicitation tasks conducted with 58 deaf participants throughout Mainland China, the paper addresses the issue of regional lexical variation in Chinese Sign Language (CSL). It aims to explore the extent of lexical variation and geographical distributions of sign varieties within the Chinese Deaf community. It is the first corpus-based quantitative research concerning the CSL lexicon supported by the CSL lexical database. It will be shown that the varieties of CSL used in different cities are dialects of the same sign language rather than different sign languages. It will also be suggested that there are only two major regional dialects of CSL. This is surprising considering the large size of both the deaf population and territory within China. This is compared to previous studies concerning other sign languages, which suggest multiple distinctive regional variants within small geographical areas. Variation also exists within the two major dialects, suggesting the existence of sub-groups of regional dialects.