Bringing together over- and under- represented languages: Linking WordNet to the SIL Semantic Domains

We have created an open-source mapping between the SIL’s semantic domains (used for rapid lexicon building and organization for under-resourced languages) and WordNet, the standard resource for lexical semantics in natural language processing. We show that the resources complement each other, and suggest ways in which the mapping can be improved even further. The semantic domains give more general domain and associative links, which wordnet still has few of, while wordnet gives explicit semantic relations between senses, which the domains lack.