Towards machine-readable lexicons for South African Bantu languages

Abstract

Lexical information for South African Bantu languages is not readily available in the form of machine-readable lexicons.At present the availability of lexical information is restricted to a variety of paper dictionaries.These dictionaries display considerable diversity in the organisation and representation of data.In order to proceed towards the development of reusable and suitably standardised machine-readable lexicons for these languages, a data model for lexical entries becomes a prerequisite.In this study the general purpose model as developed by Bell and Bird (2000) is used as a point of departure.Firstly, the extent to which the Bell and Bird (2000) data model may be applied to and modified for the above-mentioned languages is investigated.Initial investigations indicate that modification of this data model is necessary to make provision for the specific requirements of lexical entries in these languages.Secondly, a data model in the form of an XML DTD for the languages in question, based on our findings regarding (Bell & Bird, 2000) and (Weber, 2002) is presented.Included in this model are additional particular requirements for complete and appropriate representation of linguistic information as identified in the study of available paper dictionaries.

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