Speakers
Description
This paper presents DEC Facile (Bellandi et al., 2025), a tool for creating Explanatory Combinatorial Dictionaries (ECDs) in a Semantic Web environment. Grounded in Explanatory Combinatorial Lexicology (Melʹčuk et al., 1995) and adopted in both general and specialized lexicography, ECDs provide a highly structured representation of lexical meaning and combinatorial properties.
Because of their expressiveness, however, ECDs are complex and time-consuming to build. Earlier ECD editors (Sérasset, 1996; Gader et al., 2012) supported the formalization of lexicographic data; DEC Facile extends this line of work by enabling the creation of machine-actionable and interoperable ECDs compatible with Semantic Web standards. Its design is based on three principles: ease of use, especially for humanists unfamiliar with RDF/OWL; support for collaborative lexicographic work; and the production of FAIR lexical resources (Wilkinson et al., 2016).
The system is built on LexO-server (Bellandi, 2023), a Java-based backend exposing RESTful services for dictionary and sense management. It orchestrates RDF models based on OntoLex-Lemon and its extensions, notably Lexicog, SynSem, LexFom (Fonseca et al., 2016), and SKOS. Lexical data are stored in GraphDB and accessed through SPARQL queries. The graphical interface is a responsive single-page web application developed in TypeScript with Angular, PrimeNG, Tailwind CSS, and PrimeIcons. It supports structured editing, dynamic language switching, and real-time interaction with backend services.
The main interface (Figure 1*) offers an integrated workspace for navigating, creating, and managing lexical resources through a modular three-panel layout that hides the complexity of Semantic Web technologies from non-technical users. The left-hand panel provides access to the dictionary inventory, with functions for creating, importing, exporting, searching, and filtering dictionaries. The central panel organizes dictionary settings into thematic sections, while the right-hand panel contains the dictionary creation form, where users define core metadata such as label, language, and description. This design supports multilingual projects, collaborative workflows, and immediate synchronization with RDF data stored in GraphDB.
Dictionary entries are listed with essential information (lemma, part of speech, and language), and can be expanded to reveal morphological forms and lexical senses. For each entry, a set of action icons allows users to switch between consultation and editing modes, manage editorial status (e.g. working, completed, reviewed), or perform structural operations such as deletion. The interface also allows lexicographers to create new dictionary entries directly from this panel, facilitating continuous lexicographic work.
When a dictionary entry is selected from the left-hand panel (Figure 2*), the central workspace provides section-based access to its main components, i.e. definitions, government pattern, lexical functions, and usage examples.
DEC Facile supports the linking of lexical senses within definitions: during editing, lexicographers can select an existing sense from a controlled autocompleted list and insert it directly into the definition. As shown in Figure 2*, the definition of the entry venčiavonė contains cross-references to other lexical senses already encoded in the dictionary; in the RDF model, these links are represented through rdfs:seeAlso. This mechanism reduces inconsistencies and encoding errors, while enabling the computational reuse of semantic relations and providing immediate visual feedback through a definition preview.
Lexical functions are instantiated by linking target lexical senses already defined in the dictionary, rather than by manually entering strings. Lexical relations are therefore represented at sense level, improving semantic coherence and interoperability. A dedicated sense-management interface (Figure 3*) supports the hierarchical organization of senses according to graded semantic distance, in line with ECD conventions. Lexicographers can assign levels, adjust ordering, and visualize the structure in real time.
DEC Facile also provides a dictionary-style read-only view (Figure 4*), which reproduces the layout of traditional printed ECDs and displays senses, definitions, lexical functions, and examples. The resulting ECDs are represented in RDF within the OntoLex-Lemon ecosystem, stored in GraphDB, and exportable to LLOD endpoints. The tool is currently used in Old words for a New World and the RUT project.
- Figures see Book of Abstracts