IndoWordnet

Abstract

India is a multilingual country where machine translation and cross lingual search are highly relevant problems. These problems require large resources-like wordnets and lexicons-of high quality and coverage. Wordnets are lexical structures composed of synsets and semantic relations. Synsets are sets of synonyms. They are linked by semantic relations like hypernymy (is-a), meronymy (part-of), troponymy (manner-of) etc. IndoWordnet is a linked structure of wordnets of major Indian languages from Indo-Aryan, Dravidian and Sino-Tibetan families. These wordnets have been created by following the expansion approach from Hindi wordnet which was made available free for research in 2006. Since then a number of Indian languages have been creating their wordnets. In this paper we discuss the methodology, coverage, important considerations and multifarious benefits of IndoWordnet. Case studies are provided for Marathi, Sanskrit, Bodo and Telugu, to bring out the basic methodology of and challenges involved in the expansion approach. The guidelines the lexicographers follow for wordnet construction are enumerated. The difference between IndoWordnet and EuroWordnet also is discussed.