Prolexbase. A Multilingual Relational Database of Proper Names

This chapter presents Prolexbase, a multilingual relational database of proper names. Prolexbase aims to assist in the automatic translation of proper names, merging morphology, derivatives and semantic relations. The main concepts of Prolexbase are a conceptual proper name, the pivot — the referent from different points of view — and the projection set of the pivot in the particular language, called a “prolexeme”. We detail the four-level ontology of Prolexbase, which is structured into two language-independent levels and two language-dependent levels. The database follows the Data Categories and Lexical Markup Framework standards; an XML version allows the free use of the data.