| Description | The Afrikaans WordNet is a lexical reference source displaying some similarities with dictionaries and thesauri. Together with ALEXANDER, our other Afrikaans database, it should be of great use as a reference source and application. It can easily be linked to other wordnets for translational purposes. This also provides a rich source of research opportunities, because different languages are compared to each other conceptually. The Afrikaans WordNet can also be used as source in the development of technologies to disambiguate the meanings of words automatically, for document categorisation and summarisation, as well as machine translation. Entries consist of sets of (one or more) synonyms (so-called "synsets") that refer to the same concept, such as "tafel" (Princeton WordNet: "table"). Synsets are linked to each other through different semantic relations, such as the hyponymic relation which implies that "tafel" is a kind of "meubelstuk, meubel" (Princeton WordNet: "furniture, piece of furniture, article of furniture"). By following the relations, one is able to move from "tafel" to "meubelstuk, meubel" in the database. All the synsets in the wordnet are connected via different semantic relations, resulting in one big network of concepts. |
