PLIS: a Probabilistic Lexical Inference System

This paper presents PLIS, an open source Probabilistic Lexical Inference System which combines two functionalities: (i) a tool for integrating lexical inference knowledge from diverse resources, and (ii) a framework for scoring textual inferences based on the integrated knowledge. We provide PLIS with two probabilistic implementation of this framework. PLIS is available for download and developers of text processing applications can use it as an off-the-shelf component for injecting lexical knowledge into their applications. PLIS is easily configurable, components can be extended or replaced with user generated ones to enable system customization and further research. PLIS includes an online interactive viewer, which is a powerful tool for investigating lexical inference processes.