Lexica
The UNL System contains three different types of lexical databases: dictionaries, knowledge base and example bases.
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Dictionaries
In the UNL System, a dictionary is a flat list of entries with their corresponding features. The dictionaries comply with the structure defined in the Dictionary Specs and must contain only tags defined in the Tagset. They are divided in three different categories:
- The UNL Dictionary, or simply UNLdic, is a list of UW's and their semantic (language-independent) features
- The NL Dictionary, or simply NLdic, is a list of natural language entries with the corresponding morphological and syntactic (language-dependent) features
- The UNL-NL Dictionary, or simply UNL-NLdic, is list of lexical mappings between UW's and natural language entries
The UNL Dictionary and the NL Dictionary are monolingual databases, whose entries are interlinked by the UNL-NL Dictionary, which brings the mappings between UW's and natural language entries, whenever available[1]. These three dictionaries are normally made through the UNLarium in different steps and constitute the basic resource for UNLization and NLization.
UNL Knowledge Base (UNLKB)
The UNL Dictionary is simply a flat list of UW's and their corresponding classifiers (such as lexical category, semantic class, abstractness, cardinality, etc.). The UNL Dictionary does not contain any distinguisher, i.e., any information that can be used to differentiate a given UW from the others that belong to the same class. This information is provided in the UNL Knowledge Base, or UNLKB, which is a semantic network made of relations that are necessary to define UW's.
Consider, for instance, the case of the UW corresponding to the concept "a piece of furniture having a smooth flat top that is usually supported by one or more vertical legs", which may be conveyed by English word "table". The UNL Dictionary brings only the information that "table" is a nominal concrete concept which belongs to the class of artifacts. The information that "table" is "a piece of furniture having a smooth flat top" is stated in the UNLKB, which has two main goals: to provide information that can be used for word sense disambiguation, and to provide information that can be used for inference.
Example Bases
In the UNL System, there are two different types of example bases:
- The UNL Example Base, or simply UNLeb, is a network with any relations between UW's
- The UNL-NL Memory, or UNL Memory Base, or simply UNL-NLMB, is a list of mappings between UNL and a given natural language
Notes
- ↑ Not all NL dictionary entries may be mapped onto UNL. Articles, prepositions, conjunctions and other particles do not have any correspondence in UNL.
