Avoiding Recursion in the Representation of Subsenses and Subentries in Dictionaries
Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: Recursion, and recursion-like design patterns, are used in the entry schemas of dictionaries to model subsenses and subentries. Recursion occurs when elements of a given type, such as sense, are allowed to contain elements of the same or similar type, such as sense or subsense. This article argues that recursion unnecessarily increases the computational complexity of entries, making dictionaries less easily processable by machines. The article will show how entry schemas can be simplified by re-engineering subsenses and subentries as relations (like in a relational database) such that we only have flat lists of senses and entries, while the is-subsense-of and is-subentry-of relations are encoded using pairs of unique identifiers. This design pattern losslessly records the same information as recursion (including – importantly – the listing order of items inside an entry) but decreases the complexity of the entry structure and makes dictionary entries more easily machine-processable.
DOI: 10.1093/ijl/ecad012
Author: Michal Měchura
Institution: Masaryk University
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $4,251
OpenAlex ID: W4380183603