next up previous contents
Next: Higher Level Ontologies Up: Lexical Semantic Resources Previous: Resources from MemoData

Subsections


  
EDR

   
Introduction

The EDR is an electronic dictionary for English and Japanese. It is composed of five types of dictionaries: The major repository of semantic information is the Concept Dictionary.

Size

The Japanese Word Dictionary contains 250,000 words, and the English Word Dictionary contains 190,000 words. The Japanese-English Bilingual Dictionary contains 230,000 words, and the English-Japanese Bilingual Dictionary contains 190,000 words. The Concept Dictionary contains information on the 400,000 concepts. The Japanese Co-occurrence Dictionary contains 900,000 phrases, and the English Co-occurrence Dictionary contains 460,000 phrases. The Japanese Corpus contains 220,000 sentences, and the English Corpus contains 160,000 sentences.

   
Description

The purpose of the Concept Dictionary is to describe, classify and interrelate the concepts that are referred to in the Word Dictionaries, the Bilingual Dictionaries and the Co-occurrence Dictionaries. It is composed of three separate dictionaries:

The Concept Classification Dictionary

In Concept Classification, multiple inheritance is allowed. Some intermediate concepts in the EDR IS-A hierarchy may not not directly represent a word sense. There are approximately 6,000 intermediate concepts provided in the Concept Classification Dictionary. The following shows the first and second level headings for the concept classification of basic words. The five categories on the first level are indicated below as 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. An example of third level classification is provided for category 1-3 (independent body/group).

1       3aa911          subject whose behavior resembles that of a human

        1-1     30f6b0  human/person

        1-2     30f6bf  animal

        1-3     3aa912  independent body/group

                1-3-1   30f746  organization

                1-3-2   3cfacc  a collection/group of people

                1-3-3   3f960d  human race

                1-3-4   444614  meeting/conference

                1-3-5   3aa930  object/thing that moves independently



        1-4     4444b6  supernatural being



2       3d017c          matter

        2-1     444d86  thing (concrete object)

        2-2     444ab5  a matter

        2-3     444daa  name that discriminates one thing from another

        2-4     0e7faa  an objective subject



3       30f7e4          event/occurrence

        3-1     30f7e5  phenomenon

        3-2     30f83e  action/deed

        3-3     30f801  movement

        3-4     3f9856  change in state/change in condition

        3-5     3aa963  condition/state



4       30f751          location/locale/place

        4-1     3aa938  physical location/actual location/actual space

        4-2     30f753  position that is defined through the relation of several

                        things or objects

        4-3     30f767  area/territory/domain

        4-4     3f9651  part of something

        4-5     3f9658  direction

        4-6     444a9d  abstract location



5       30f776          time

        5-1     3f9882  point in time

        5-2     444dd2  a period of time that occurs at intervals

        5-3     444dd3  a period of time with a beginning and ending point

        5-4     30f77b  time/duration of time

        5-5     444dd4  a time measurement/time that is indicated in units

        5-6     4449e2  a period

        5-7     30f7d6  elapse of time (considered from a historical point of view)

The Concept Description Dictionary

Semantic relations between a verbal and a nominal concept are described by means of the following relations:


AGENT   That which acts on its own volition and is the subject that brings about

        an action

        Ex. The father eats.

                AGENT  MAIN



OBJECT  That which is affected by an action or change

        Ex. (He/She) eats an apple.

                     MAIN    OBJECT

A-OBJECT 

        That which has a particular attribute

        Ex. A tomato   is red.

              A-OBJECT    MAIN



IMPLEMENT

        That which is used in a voluntary action such as tools or other

        implements

        Ex. (I) cut  with a knife.

                MAIN        IMPLEMENT



MATERIAL

        That which is used to make up something

        Ex. (He/she) makes butter from milk.

                     MAIN  OBJECT      MATERIAL



SOURCE  Location from which an event or occurrence begins

        Ex. (I) come from Kyoto.

                MAIN      SOURCE



GOAL    Location from which an event or occurrence ends

        Ex. (I) go   to Tokyo.

                MAIN    GOAL



PLACE   Place (physical location) at which something occurs

        Ex. (I) play in the room.

                MAIN        PLACE



SCENE   Place (abstract location) at which something occurs

        Ex. (I) act  in a drama.

                MAIN      SCENE



BASIS   That which is used as the standard of comparison

        Ex. Roses are more beautiful than tulips.

        [ [MAIN more]

          [OBJECT [ [MAIN beautiful]

                    [A-OBJECT rose]]]

                    [BASIS [ [MAIN beautiful]

                             [A-OBJECT tulip]]]



MANNER  Way in which an action or change occurs

        Ex. (I) speak slowly.

                MAIN  MANNER



        Ex. (I) watch for 3 hours.

        [ [MAIN watch]

          [MANNER [ [MAIN hour]

                    [NUMBER 3]]]]



TIME    Time at which something occurrs

        Ex. (I) wake up at 8 o'clock.

        [ [MAIN wake up]

          [TIME [ [MAIN o'clock]

                  [MODIFIER 8]]]]



TIME-FROM

        Time at which something begins

        Ex. (I) work from 9 o'clock.

        [ [MAIN work]

          [TIME-FROM [ [MAIN o'clock]

                       [MODIFIER 9]]]]



TIME-TO Time at which something ends

        Ex. (I) work until 9 o'clock.

        [ [MAIN work]

          [TIME-TO [ [MAIN o'clock]

                     [MODIFIER 9]]]]



QUANTITY

        Amount (quantity) of a thing, action, or change

        Ex. (There are) 3 kgs of apples.

        [ [MAIN apple]

          [QUANTITY [ [MAIN kg]

                      [NUMBER 3]]]]



        Ex. (I) lost 3 kgs.

        [ [MAIN lose]

          [QUANTITY [ [MAIN kg]

                      [NUMBER 3]]]]



MODIFIER

        Modification

        Ex. the book on the desk

        [ [MAIN book]

          [MODIFIER [ [MAIN on]

                      [MODIFIER desk]]]]



NUMBER  Number

        Ex. 3      kgs

            NUMBER MAIN



AND     Coordination between concepts

        Ex. (I) go to Rome and Naples.

        [ [MAIN go]

          [GOAL [ [MAIN Naples]

                  [AND Rome]

                  [ATTRIBUTE focus]]]]



        Ex. The mountains are beautiful and the water is clear.

        [ [MAIN [ [MAIN clear]

                  [A-OBJECT water]]]

          [AND    [ [MAIN beautiful]

                    [A-OBJECT mountain]]]]



OR      Selection between concepts

        Ex. (I will) go to Rome or Naples.

        [ [MAIN go]

          [GOAL [ [MAIN Naples]

                  [OR Rome]

                  [ATTRIBUTE focus]]]]



        Ex. (I will) go to school or go to the library.

        [ [MAIN [ [MAIN go]

                  [GOAL library]]]

          [OR   [ [MAIN go]

                  [GOAL school]]]]



CONDITION

        Condition of an occurrence or fact

        Ex. (I) It rained so (I) went home.

        [ [MAIN [ [MAIN went]

                  [GOAL home]]]

          [CONDITION rain]]



PURPOSE Purpose or reason for an action or occurrence

        Ex. (I) go to see a movie.

        [ [MAIN go]

          [PURPOSE [ [MAIN see]

                     [OBJECT movie]]]]



COOCCURRENCE

        Simultaneous occurrence of events or actions

        Ex. (I) cried while I was going home.

        [ [MAIN cry]

          [COOCCURRENCE [ [MAIN go]

                          [GOAL home]]]]



SEQUENCE

        Sequential occurrence of events or actions

        Ex. (I) went to the library and borrowed a book.

        [ [MAIN borrow]

          [OBJECT book]

          [SEQUENCE [ [MAIN go]

                      [GOAL library]]]]



POSSESSOR

        Possession or ownership

        Ex. (my) father's  book

                 POSSESSOR MAIN



BENEFICIARY

        Beneficiary (receiver) of an action or occurrence

        Ex. (I) buy  a book for my father.

                MAIN               BENEFICIARY



UNIT    Unit

        Ex. (This costs) 500 yen per dozen.

        [ [MAIN yen]

          [NUMBER 500]

          [UNIT [ [MAIN dozen]

                  [NUMBER 1]]]]



FROM-TO Range of items specified

        Ex. the cities from Osaka to Tokyo

        [ [MAIN cities]

          [MODIFIER [ [MAIN Tokyo]

                      [FROM-TO Osaka]]]]

Two types of concept relations are distinguished: ``E'' and ``I''. E-relations are based on concepts which are actual word senses, e.g. ``3d0ecb'' and ``0e5097'' as concept identifiers for specific uses of the words borrow, book. I-relations are based on intermediate concepts which are not actual word senses, but may be superordinate of actual word senses or other intermediate concepts, such as the concept identifier ``30f6ae'' which is a superordinate for any concept describing a stationary object.

Paradigmatic information involving conceptual aspects of word knowledge, e.g. semantic frame information, is provided in other dictionaries as shown in the Cooccurrence Dictionary entry below.


<Record Number>                         ECC157145

<Headword Information>

        <Headphrase>                    eaten   @d-object   lunch

<Co-occurrence Constituent Information>

<Constituent #> <Morpheme> <Stem>  <POS>  <Idiom Flag> <Concept Info>

 1               eaten      eat     VERB   0            3bc6f0  

 2               lunch      lunch   NOUN   0            3bec74  

<Syntactic Tree Information>

        <Syntactic Sub-tree>

                <Governing Constituent> 1/eaten

                <Relator Constituent>   2/@d-object

                <Dependent Constituent> 2/lunch

<Semantic Information>

        <Semantic Sub-frame>

                <Concept of Governing Element>  1/3bc6f0/eaten

                <Semantic Relation>             object

                <Concept of Dependent Element>  1/3bec74/lunch

<Co-occurrence Situation Information>

        <Frequency>                     3;2;173;65

        <Example Sentence>              {003000002264/ have you (eaten) <lunch>}

<Management Information>

        <Management History Record>     DATE="95/3/31"

  
Comparison with Other Lexical Databases

The EDR is one of the most complete large-scale lexical databases available. It combines rich bilingual and monolingual dictionary information (e.g. including details about syntactic and semantic subcategorization) with a WordNet-style organization of word senses into a hierarchy of concepts (e.g. synsets). Unlike EuroWordNet (§ 3.4.3) and even more than WordNet1.5 (§3.4.2), the EDR concept hierarchy includes nodes (intermediate concepts) which do not correspond to actual word sense. In EDR these concepts are explicitly marked, which is not the case in WordNet1.5. The EDR also provides a detailed characterization of semantic relations (e.g. agent, source, goal) which is usually only found in experimental lexical such as those developed in ACQUILEX (§ 3.10.3), DELIS (§3.10.5) and EUROTRA (§ 3.9.1), or partially encoded as in EuroWordNet.

  
Relation to Notions of Lexical Semantics

As mentioned with reference to LLOCE, the combination of syntactic and semantic information given in the EDR is particularly well suited for addressing questions concerning the syntax-semantics interface. Another strong relation to lexical semantic notions concerns the use of semantic relations, although the classification adopted goes well beyond the characterization of event-participant roles.

  
LE Uses

The EDR was specifically developed for advanced processing of natural language by computers and has been used in a variety of applications including Machine Translation, lexical acquisition and Word Disambiguation.



next up previous contents
Next: Higher Level Ontologies Up: Lexical Semantic Resources Previous: Resources from MemoData
EAGLES Central Secretariat eagles@ilc.cnr.it