Global Information

LMF provides several classes for describing global information about the lexicon and constraints. lemon, however, does not need to do this as it can use the OWL language to specify decidable constraints on the lexicon. OWL will not be fully described here however there are many excellent resources available. A good place to start may be the W3C documents available at http://www.w3.org/standards/techs/owl#w3c_all. Here we shall show an example of how OWL can be used to specify that French nouns are only masculine or feminine.

:FrenchLexicon a owl:Class ;
  owl:equivalentTo [ owl:intersectionOf (
    lemon:Lexicon
    [ a owl:Restriction ;
       owl:onProperty lemon:language ;
       owl:hasValue “fr” ]
  ) ] ;
  rdfs:subClassOf [ a owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty lemon:entry ;
    owl:allValuesForm :FrenchWord ] .

:Noun a owl:Class ;
  owl:equivalentTo [ a owl:Restriction ;
       owl:onProperty isocat:partOfSpeech ;
       owl:hasValue isocat:noun ] .

:FrenchWord a owl:Class .

:FrenchNoun a owl:Class ;
  owl:equivalentTo [ owl:intersectionOf (
    :FrenchWord :Noun ) ] ;
  rdfs:subClassOf [ a owl:Restriction ;
    owl:onProperty isocat:grammaticalGender ;
    owl:allValuesFrom [ owl:oneOf (
      isocat:masculine isocat:feminine ) ] ] .

The OWL restrictions are as follows in DL syntax:

$\begin{displaymath} FrenchLexicon ≡ Lexicon ⊓ ∋language.”fr” \end{displaymath}$

$\begin{displaymath} FrenchLexicon ⊑ ∀entry.FrenchWord \end{displaymath}$

$\begin{displaymath} Noun ≡ ∋partOfSpeech.noun \end{displaymath}$

$\begin{displaymath} FrenchNoun ≡ FrenchWord ⊓ Noun \end{displaymath}$

$\begin{displaymath} FrenchNoun ⊑ ∀grammaticalGender.\{masculine,feminine\} \end{displaymath}$

We first state that FrenchLexicons are those lexica that have the value “fr” for the language property, and that all entries of FrenchLexicons are FrenchWords. We then define the class Noun as all things that have the value noun for the partOfSpeech property and then that FrenchNouns are FrenchWords that are also Nouns. Finally the key restriction is that every FrenchNoun has its grammaticalGender from the set {masculine, feminine}. (Note we do not assert here that the gender cannot be both masculine and feminine, as some words may be both, such as “après-midi”, however it is of course possible to do so).

Property Description

topic The topic of a lexicon or lexical entry

definition The definition of a lexical entry relative to a sense.

John McCrae 2012-07-31

Property	Description
`topic`	The topic of a lexicon or lexical entry
`definition`	The definition of a lexical entry relative to a sense.