ODL: an Object Description Language for Lexical Information

This paper describes ODL, a description language for lexical information that is being developed within the context of a national project called MLRS (Maltese Language Resource Server) whose goal is to create a national corpus and computational lexicon for the Maltese language. The main aim of ODL is to make the task of the lexicographer easier by allowing lexical specifications to be set out formally so that actual entries will conform to them. The paper describes some of the background motivation, the ODL language itself, and concludes with a short example of how lexical values expressed in ODL can be mapped to an existing tagset together with some speculations about future work.