Multilinguality and Reversibility in Computational Semantic Lexicons

Abstract

In this paper, we address the issue of generating multilingua.1 computational semantic lexicons from analysis lexicons, showing the necessity of relying on a conceptual lexicon.We first discuss the type of information which should be found in NLP lexicons, whatever their use (analysis, generation, speech, robotics).We claim that we should take advantage of the existing large-scale analysis lexicons and use tliem as the starting point in the process of building large-scale generation lexicons, by first reversing tliem and then enhancing them.Tliis implies having access to a conceptual lexicon, which will serve as a pivot point between the analysis and the generation lexicons.We implemented the work reported here for Spanish and English MT projects, within the knowledge-based paradigm.From a theoretical point of view, regenerating the source text with the reversed analysis lexicon enabled us to enhance several issues as diverse as: evaluating analysis lexicons, testing the semantic analyser, evaluating which information should be added to the generation lexicon; and testing the grain-size of the pivot point between analysis and generation.