The Top-Down Strategy for Building EuroWordNet: Vocabulary Coverage, Base Concepts and Top Ontology

This paper describes two fundamental aspects in the process of building of the EuroWordNet database. In EuroWordNet we have chosen for a flexible design in which local wordnets are built relatively independently as language-specific structures, which are linked to an Inter-Lingual-Index (ILI). To ensure compatibility between the wordnets, a core set of common concepts has been defined that has to be covered by every language. Furthermore, these concepts have been classified via the ILI in terms of a Top Ontology of 63 fundamental semantic distinctions used in various semantic theories and paradigms. This paper first discusses the process leading to the definition of the set of Base Concepts, and the structure and the rationale of the Top Ontology.