Tools for Building an Interlinked Synonym Lexicon Network

Abstract: This paper presents the structure, features and design of a new interlinked verbal synonym lexical resource called CzEngClass and the editor tool being developed to assist the work. This lexicon captures cross-lingual (Czech and English) synonyms, using valency behavior of synonymous verbs in relation to semantic roles as one of the criteria for defining such interlingual synonymy. The tool, called Synonym Class Editor - SynEd, is a user-friendly tool specifically customized to build and edit individual entries in the lexicon. It helps to keep the cross-lingual synonym classes consistent and linked to internal as well as to well-known external lexical resources. The structure of SynEd also allows to keep and edit the appropriate syntactic and semantic information for each Synonym Class member. The editor makes it possible to display examples of class members’ usage in translational context in a parallel corpus. SynEd is platform independent and may be used for multiple languages. SynEd, CzEngClass and services based on them will be openly available.