Multifunction Thesaurus for Russian Word Processing

MULTIFUNCTION THESAURUS FOR RUSSIAN WORD PROCESSING Igor A. Bolshakov Institute of Russian Language Russian Academy of Science Volkhonka, 18/2, 121019, Moscow, Russia E-mail irlras@irl.msk.su Abstract A new type of thesaurus for word process- ing is proposed. It comprises 7 semantic and 8 syntagmatic types of links between Russian words and collocations. The orig- inal version now includes ca. 76,000 ba- sic dictionary entries, 660,000 semantic and 292,000 syntagmatic links, English inter- face, and communication with any text edi- tor. Methods of delivery enriching are used based on generic and synonymous links. 1 Introduction Thesauri for commercial text editors are reduced now to synonym dictionaries. Meanwhile, the users often need to know, how might the given meaning be expressed by other words, not obligatory strictly synonymous or of different parts of speech, and what words are steadily combinable with the given one in texts. So various semantic (i.e. synonymous, antonymous, derivative, generic, meronymic) and syntagmatic (combinatorial) links are of interest. Systematization of these links by A. Zholkovsky I. Mel'chuk [1, 2] as lexical functions did not solve problem of gathering specific LF values. This proved to be of tremendous complexity and solved by the school of Mel'chuk-Apresian with speed insufficient for immediate word processing applications. But grouping LF makes them simpler for a common user to comprehend and less laborious for a developer to compile. To get a friendly reference facility on links bet- ween Russian words, we have developed a prototype thesaurus named CrossLexica. 2 Directions of thesaurus use In non-Russian community, our thesaurus is for stu- dents of universities with Slavonic departments, pro- fessional translators and teachers of Russian. A com- petence of such users in Russian may be various. So in the abroad version, hard-copy documentation, commands names, on-line help, error messages, and built-in translation dictionary were supplied in En- glish. Modes of use are the same for all conditions and comprise references out of or within context. In the first mode, the user types in a keyword by himself and gets, say, a set of its governing verbs. In the sec- ond mode, a query is formed within a conventional text editor, with return of the available information to the editor. In perspective, there exist many other ways of use of thesaurus DB, e.g. for filtering in syntactic parser. The user might get through thesaurus following information: (1) synonyms; (2) antonym(s); (3) hy- peronym; (4) hyponyms; (5) holonym; (6) mero- nyms; (7) common attributes for a given key; (8) words typically attributed by a given key; (9) se- mantic derivatives, i.e. the group of words convey- ing the same meaning through words of diverse parts of speech or through the same p.o.s., reflecting an- other participant of the situation; (10) verbs, (11) nouns, (12) adjectives, and (13) adverbs managing and steadily combinable with a given key; (14) man- aging model (case frame) for a given key, with all examples available; (15) a complementary element of a steadily coordinated pair (e.g. prava i svobody 'rights and liberties'). Consistently …

Content truncated to 500 words