Strategies for building wordnets for under-resourced languages: The case of African languages
The African Wordnet Project (AWN) aims at building wordnets for five African languages: Setswana, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sesotho sa Leboa (also referred to as Sepedi or Northern Sotho) and Tshivenda. Currently, the so-called expand model, based on the structure of the English Princeton WordNet (PWN), is...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | Afrikaans |
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AOSIS
2017-03-01
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| Series: | Literator |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://literator.org.za/index.php/literator/article/view/1351 |
| _version_ | 1819113586745671680 |
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| author | Sonja E. Bosch Marissa Griesel |
| author_facet | Sonja E. Bosch Marissa Griesel |
| author_sort | Sonja E. Bosch |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The African Wordnet Project (AWN) aims at building wordnets for five African languages: Setswana, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sesotho sa Leboa (also referred to as Sepedi or Northern Sotho) and Tshivenda. Currently, the so-called expand model, based on the structure of the English Princeton WordNet (PWN), is used to continually develop the African Wordnets manually. This is a labour-intensive work that needs to be performed by linguistic experts, guided by several considerations such as the level of lexicalisation of a term in the African language. Up to now, linguists were responsible for identifying and translating appropriate synsets without much help from electronic resources because in the case of African languages even basic resources such as computer readable and electronic bilingual wordlists are usually not freely available. Methods to speed up the manual development of synsets and ease the workload of the human language experts were recently investigated. These centred around utilising the minimal amount of information available in bilingual dictionaries to identify synsets in the PWN that should be included in the AWN, transferring information from dictionaries to the wordnet and presenting the potential synsets to linguists for final approval and inclusion in the wordnets. In this article, we describe the methodology developed for building the African Wordnets, a potentially significant resource for natural language processing applications. Available resources that could be taken advantage of and resources that had to be developed are investigated, and initial results and future plans are explained. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-22T04:31:46Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-afb1ae04a1cd43d9b65f6f05fd7f13da |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 0258-2279 2219-8237 |
| language | Afrikaans |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-22T04:31:46Z |
| publishDate | 2017-03-01 |
| publisher | AOSIS |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Literator |
| spelling | doaj.art-afb1ae04a1cd43d9b65f6f05fd7f13da2022-12-21T18:39:00ZafrAOSISLiterator0258-22792219-82372017-03-01381e1e1210.4102/lit.v38i1.13511196Strategies for building wordnets for under-resourced languages: The case of African languagesSonja E. Bosch0Marissa Griesel1Department of African Languages, University of South Africa; African Wordnet ProjectDepartment of African Languages, University of South Africa; African Wordnet ProjectThe African Wordnet Project (AWN) aims at building wordnets for five African languages: Setswana, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sesotho sa Leboa (also referred to as Sepedi or Northern Sotho) and Tshivenda. Currently, the so-called expand model, based on the structure of the English Princeton WordNet (PWN), is used to continually develop the African Wordnets manually. This is a labour-intensive work that needs to be performed by linguistic experts, guided by several considerations such as the level of lexicalisation of a term in the African language. Up to now, linguists were responsible for identifying and translating appropriate synsets without much help from electronic resources because in the case of African languages even basic resources such as computer readable and electronic bilingual wordlists are usually not freely available. Methods to speed up the manual development of synsets and ease the workload of the human language experts were recently investigated. These centred around utilising the minimal amount of information available in bilingual dictionaries to identify synsets in the PWN that should be included in the AWN, transferring information from dictionaries to the wordnet and presenting the potential synsets to linguists for final approval and inclusion in the wordnets. In this article, we describe the methodology developed for building the African Wordnets, a potentially significant resource for natural language processing applications. Available resources that could be taken advantage of and resources that had to be developed are investigated, and initial results and future plans are explained.https://literator.org.za/index.php/literator/article/view/1351African wordnetunder-resourced languagessemi-automatic extractionbilingual dictionaries |
| spellingShingle | Sonja E. Bosch Marissa Griesel Strategies for building wordnets for under-resourced languages: The case of African languages Literator African wordnet under-resourced languages semi-automatic extraction bilingual dictionaries |
| title | Strategies for building wordnets for under-resourced languages: The case of African languages |
| title_full | Strategies for building wordnets for under-resourced languages: The case of African languages |
| title_fullStr | Strategies for building wordnets for under-resourced languages: The case of African languages |
| title_full_unstemmed | Strategies for building wordnets for under-resourced languages: The case of African languages |
| title_short | Strategies for building wordnets for under-resourced languages: The case of African languages |
| title_sort | strategies for building wordnets for under resourced languages the case of african languages |
| topic | African wordnet under-resourced languages semi-automatic extraction bilingual dictionaries |
| url | https://literator.org.za/index.php/literator/article/view/1351 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT sonjaebosch strategiesforbuildingwordnetsforunderresourcedlanguagesthecaseofafricanlanguages AT marissagriesel strategiesforbuildingwordnetsforunderresourcedlanguagesthecaseofafricanlanguages |