Prolexbase: a Multilingual Relational Lexical Database of Proper Names
Denis Maurel · 2008
This paper deals with a multilingual relational lexical database of proper name, Prolexbase, a free resource available on the CNRTL website.The Prolex model is based on two main concepts: firstly, a language independent pivot and, secondly, the prolexeme (the projection of the pivot onto particular language), that is a set of lemmas (names and derivatives).These two concepts model the variations of proper name: firstly, independent of language and, secondly, language dependent by morphology or knowledge.Variation processing is very important for NLP: the same proper name can be written in different instances, maybe in different parts of speech, and it can also be replaced by another one, a lexical anaphora (that reveals semantic link).The pivot represents different referent's points of view, i.e. language independent variations of name.Pivots are linked by three semantic relations (quasi-synonymy, partitive relation and associative relation).The prolexeme is a set of variants (aliases), quasi-synonyms and morphosemantic derivatives.Prolexemes are linked to classifying contexts and reliability code.