Words, Concepts and Relations in the Construction of Polish WordNet

Abstract

Abstract. A Polish WordNet has been under construction for two years. We discuss the organisation of the project, the fundamental assumptions, the tools and the resources. We show how our work di ers from that done on EuroWordNet and BalkaNet. In a year we expect the network to reach 20000 lexical units. Some 12000 entries will have been completed by hand. Work on others will be automated as far as possible; to that end, we have developed statistics-based semantic similarity functions and methods based on a form of chunking. The preliminary results show that at least semi-automated acquisition of relations is feasible, so that the lexicographers ' work may be reduced to revision and approval. 1 Organisation of the project Ever since the initial burst of popularity of the original WordNet [1, 2], there has been little doubt how useful wordnets are in Natural Language Processing. For those who work with a language that lacks a wordnet, the question is not whether, but how and how fast to construct such a lexical resource. The construction is costly, with the bulk of the cost due to the high linguistic workload. This appears to have been the case, in particular, in two multinational wordnetbuilding projects, EuroWordNet [3] and BalkaNet [4]. The recent developments in automatic acquisition of lexical-semantic relations suggest that the cost might be reduced. Our project to construct a Polish WordNet (plWordNet) explores this path as a supplement to a well-organized and well-supported e ort of a team of linguists/lexicographers.