A computational semantic lexicon of Italian: SIMPLE

Abstract - This paper describes the Italian Semantic Computational Lexicon elaborated in the framework of the European LE-SIMPLE Project. SIMPLE was aimed at adding a layer of semantic information to a subset of PAROLE lexica. The SIMPLE framework is based principally on the Generative Lexicon theory which allows to express the multidimensionality of meaning by means of ‘qualia structure’. Word senses are described according to their position within the SIMPLE ontology, which is based on the principle of orthogonal inheritance and consists of semantic types for characterizing simple nouns, event and property denoting lexical units. The encoding process is guided by templates, that are schematic structures containing clusters of structured information specific to each semantic type. Besides a high degree of granularity of meaning representation, the SIMPLE lexicon presents innovative aspects such as link between the syntactic and semantic levels of information, description of predicative representation and enforcement of selectional restrictions/preferences on arguments.