Enriching the Spanish EuroWordNet by Collocations

Collocations constitute an important type of syntagmatic information whose introduction into WordNets has not yet been addressed. The goal of our work is the integration of the collocational material for the field of emotion nouns encoded in the DIccionario de colocaciones del español (DICE) in terms of Lexical Functions into the Spanish part of the EuroWordNet (SpEWN). Two features of collocations are decisive in connection with their representation in SpEWN: (i) they are variant-specific rather than synset-specific and (ii) depending on the degree of their idiosyncrasy, they may be generalized to a certain degree. These features are accounted for by introducing new structures into the SpEWN. These new structures are compatible with the general design principles of the EWN. Given that SpEWN and DICE reveal a diverging distinction of the senses of lexical items, prior to the introduction of collocations from DICE into SpEWN, the senses of the elements of collocations in SpEWN and DICE are aligned.