LexVoc

LexVoc Vocabulary of Lexicographic Terms

The vocabulary is being developed for different purposes:

• Elexifinder categories are derived from LexVoc, and are available for search and filter functions in the Elexifinder app, complementary to Elexifinder concepts (obtained through automatic wikifikation).
• Content describing indexation of LexBib Zotero bibliographical items.
• Concepts in a tree graph with SKOS relations as edges, and “Lexicography” as root node. This concept tree can be seen as ramification of the “Lexicography” subject heading as listed in cross-domain library vocabularies; see e.g. “Lexicography” in LCSH, or “Lexicography” in BLL.

LexVoc terms have English preferred and alternative lexicalizations; relations between them are represented according to the W3C SKOS standard. Lexicalizations in other languages have been drafted from BabelNet and Wikidata, and will be manually validated and completed (see LexVoc translation on Lexonomy).

• Graph view, complete, coloured: Build live.

Sources for LexVoc have been the following:

1. An updated and extended version of the index of Bibliografía Temática de la Lexicografía (Córdoba Rodríguez 2003) translated to English, members here
2. The typology of dictionaries by Engelberg and Storrer (2016), members here
3. The Glossary of Lexicographic Terms by Kipfer (2013), members here
4. The index of the volume Using Online Dictionaries (Müller-Spitzer 2014), members here
5. The Linguistic Property branch of the GOLD ontology, members here

We have merged all concepts stemming from sources (1) to (5), and set relations between them, so that terms can be represented as nodes in a single graph, with SKOS relations as edges.

In a second step, we have extended the vocabulary with a manually revised subset (members) of salient term candidates, extracted from a corpus compiled using all English full texts present in the collection used for Elexifinder version 2 (Spring 2021).

We have then extended the vocabulary further, using term extraction results from subsets of our English full texts. This has been done for the field of dictionary digitization (narrower of dictionary making).

LexVoc main branches as they are defined today are listed below. Names of natural languages have been part of the vocabulary in LexBib experimental version 2, and articles have been indexed with language names found in their full texts (example). This branch currently is not maintained, and not used as Elexifinder category, since natural languages as search filter are available through wikification (Elexifinder concepts, not categories.)

Elexifinder Categories

Terms that serve as Elexifinder category belong to the first three skos:broader hierarchy levels below the root concept. Terms deeper in the hierarchy are considered in article indexation, and so are closeMatch terms without own broader-hierarchy, but the assigned category visible on Elexifinder will be the corresponding broader category of the third level below root.

• Graph view, Elexifinder categories only (upper three hierarchy levels): Query.

LexVoc main branches

The following concepts are directly linked to root node “Lexicography” using skos:broader. These are Elexifinder main categories. Two narrower levels below each top-level concept are also considered as (visible) Elexifinder category. Click on the “Graph” links to get a graph representation, with the top-level concept as root node.

• Dictionary Structure (Graph)
• Dictionary Type (Graph)
• Dictionary Making (Graph)
• Dictionary Use (Graph)
• Dictionary Function (Graph)
• Dictionary Distribution Type (Graph)
• Linguistic Property (Graph)
• NLP / Corpus Linguistics (Graph)
• Software <TBD> (Graph)

Development Workflow

LexVoc, in its actual state, is by no means complete nor finished. It is ongoing work. On Elexis LexMeet, you can contribute to the discussion about LexVoc structure, i.e. the definition of main branches, and the inner organization of these. We also call for collaboration for LexVoc translation on Lexonomy (see our 2021 Euralex paper).

Regarding inclusion of new terms: As soon as a new term (i.e. a member of Class "Term", and of at least one skos:Collection) is linked to a member of the main SKOS graph using skos:broader or skos:closeMatch, it is considered in subsequent iterations of article full text indexation. On the other hand, if a term has no skos:broader or skos:closeMatch relation to another term, it is not (any more) considered for article full text indexation. An article full text indexation iteration (performed locally by User:DavidL) thus reflects the state of LexVoc at that particular point of time.

Full text indexation with LexVoc terms, version 3, is currently in preparation. You can see single articles and associated LexVoc terms in version 2 (on a single bibliographical item's wikipage (example), click on the value of "LexBib v2 legacy ID".)

Stop-labels

Some term lexicalizations (SKOS labels) are very ambiguous, and do not yield proper results (many false positives and/or too many distinct word senses relevant in the domain of Lexicography). At the time being, our workaround is a label stop-list, which is accessible here. These term labels are not considered in article full text indexation (if a term has several labels, the other labels are not affected).