Open AccessBuilding specialized dictionaries using lexical functions
Author(s) -
Jeanne Dancette,
Marie-Claude L’Homme
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
linguistica antverpiensia new series - themes in translation studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2295-5739
DOI - 10.52034/lanstts.v3i.107
Subject(s) - computer science , variety (cybernetics) , lexical item , linguistics , natural language processing , term (time) , artificial intelligence , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics
It is now widely acknowledged that terms enter into a variety of structures and that classic taxonomies and meronymies represent only a small part of the relationships terms share. This can be seen in recent specialized dictionaries that account for derivational relationships, co-occurrents, synonyms, antonyms, etc. It also has been underlined in several articles written by terminologists as well as linguists or computational scientists working with specialized corpora. This article will discuss the advanta ges and shortcomings of trying to account for semantic relations between terms using a specific framework, i.e. lexical functions (Mel’cuk et al. 1984-1999, 1995). It is based on a long-term project aimed at converting an existing paper dictionary (Dancette & Réthoré 2000) into a relational database. We will show that even if lexical functions have several advantages, a number of decisions must be made to accommodate the description of specialized terms.