K onkani W ordnet Visualizer as a Concept Teaching-Learning Tool (2024)

Abstract: The Visualizer is a tree-structure designed to browse and explore the Konkani WordNet lexical database. We propose to utilise this tool as a concept teaching and learning resource for Konkani, to be used by both teachers and students. It can also be used to add the missing semantic and lexical relations, thus enhancing the wordnet. It extracts related concepts for a given word and displays them as a sub-tree. The interface includes various features to offer users greater flexibility in navigating and understanding the word relationships. We attempted to enrich the Konkani Wordnet qualitatively with a Visualizer that offers an improved usability and is incorporated in the Konkani Wordnet website for the public use. The Visualizer is designed to provide graphical representations of words and their semantic relationships, making it easier to explore connections and meanings within the lexical database.

## introduction the konkani wordnet @xcite is a lexical resource developed to support various nlp tasks in the konkani language @xcite . also known as konkani shabdamalem, it was created as part of the indradhanush wordnet project consortium between august 2010 and october 2013. in this project, along with the konkani language word-net, six other indian languages-bengali, gujarati, kashmiri, odia, punjabi, and urdu wordnet were constructed using the expansion approach, with the hindi wordnet serving as the source. later, these wordnets were connected to the indowordnet @xcite . the current version of the konkani wordnet contains approximately 32,370 synsets and 37,719 unique words. konkani wordnet is a lexical database that provides detailed semantic relations between words like synonymy, hypernymy, hyponymy, meronymy, holonymy, etc. these relationships help in understanding word meanings and their interconnections, which is crucial for tasks in natural language processing (nlp) and machine translation. to effectively utilise this knowledge, a set of tools is necessary for querying, retrieving, and visualising information from the knowledge base. data visualisation involves representing information schematically, including attributes or variables of the data units. the primary objective of visualisation is to present information clearly and effectively through graphical means. our developed user interface provides a visual representation of the konkani wordnet, allowing users to input a konkani word and view related concepts based on its semantic and lexical relationships within the wordnet. additionally, the konkani wordnet visualizer features speech pronunciations from the shabdocchar corpus, an audio corpus enhanced by feature techniques, as discussed in another paper. this paper is organised as follows. section 2 presents related work. section 3 offers an overview of the konkani wordnet. section 4 explains the konkani wordnet visualizer in detail. section 5 outlines the implementation specifics. section 6 explains the multilingualism of the visualizer. section 7 explores using visualizer as a teaching-learning tool. section 8 speaks about the future work. the conclusion and discussion are presented in section 9. ## related work there are various tools for browsing and exploring wordnets @xcite to better understand concepts and their semantic relations. one such tool, babel-net explorer @xcite , is specifically designed to visualise the babelnet lexical database @xcite . it uses a tree layout for intuitive navigation and covers languages such as english, italian, catalan, spanish, german, and french. the indowordnet visualizer (chaplot et al., 2014) 1 offers a graphical user interface for exploring word-nets across indian languages, including konkani. in-dowordnet's diverse lexical and semantic relations significantly deepen the understanding of word meanings and their intricate connections, making it an essential resource for linguistic analysis. lexical relations include gradation (covering aspects like state, size, and color for all parts of speech), antonymy (addressing various attributes such as action and quality), compounds (for nouns), and conjunctions (for verbs). semantic relations involve hypernymy and holonymy (for nouns and verbs), meronymy (which includes components, members, and features), troponymy (for verbs), and various relationships between nouns, adjectives, and verbs like similar attributes, function verbs, ability verbs, and capability verbs. additional relations such as causative forms and nominal and verbal compounds are also provided. indowordnet visualizer allows users to visually explore these relationships, offering a clearer understanding of their interactions. one of the visualization implementation for english language is made available by visuwords 2 . this implementation is interactive and visually appealing, making it suitable for learning concepts and semantic relations. ## overview of konkani wordnet the konkani wordnet is a linguistic resource created to aid nlp tasks in the konkani language. known as konkani shabdamalem, it was developed under the indradhanush wordnet project consortium from august 2010 to october 2013. the current version of konkani wordnet comprises approximately 32,370 synsets and 37,719 unique words. the table below shows the pos category-wise break-up of konkani wordnet synsets pos category synset count noun 23144 verbs 3000 adjectives 5744 adverbs 482 total synsets 32370 the konkani wordnet stores various relationships between words and groups of words, providing important insights into the language's structure. these relationships are divided into two main categories: lexical and semantic. ## konkani wordnet visualizer the konkani wordnet visualizer foot_1 is designed to visualise the words and its relationships in konkani word-net. it is publicly accessible on the konkani wordnet website. konkani is a low-resource language, and there has been a limited amount of work regarding tools and technology development. this scarcity underscores the need to accelerate the development process for the overall advancement of the konkani language. this tool extracts related concepts for a given input word at various levels and presents a sub-tree on the screen. this visualizer is further modified as per the user-specific requirements. one such user requirement is to develop a teaching-learning tool for understanding languagespecific concepts. for example, hypernymy-hyponymy relations can be used to make them understand the type-of relations between konkani concepts. similarly, holonymy-meronymy relations can be used to explain the part-of relationship between various konkani concepts. below is a description of the user interface layout and its features. the visualizer interface offers various input and output features to facilitate exploration. the next subsection elaborates the interactive features. ## multilingualism of the visualization approach since the konkani wordnet was developed as part of the indradhanush wordnet project, which included seven indian languages i.e. konkani, bengali, gujarati, kashmiri, oriya, punjabi, and urdu. the konkani wordnet visualizer can be adapted to create visualizers for the other six languages using a similar approach. although efforts have been made in the past to develop an indowordnet visualizer, it is currently not publicly available for use or reuse. to explore the multilingual expansion of the konkani wordnet visualizer, we have developed a hindi wordnet visualizer using a sample database available to us, which can be seen in figure 8 . this initiative leverages the fact that the konkani wordnet database structure was initially designed based on the hindi wordnet. we have made this implementation available on github foot_2 to facilitate the development of wordnet visualizers for other languages in the future. ## visualizer utility as a teaching learning tool to utilize the konkani wordnet visualizer as an effective teaching-learning tool, a structured approach is designed to emphasize its various functionalities. the process begins with navigation and exploration, where learners are guided to search for specific words, such as 'फू ल' (flower), and identify associated hypernyms, hyponyms, or related semantic relations. this allows learners to interactively explore and understand the connections between words. additionally, they can delve into meronymy relationships by identifying the components of words like 'घड्याळ' (clock), thereby gaining insights into "part-of" connections. the teaching approach further incorporates activities focusing on semantic relationships, such as "partof" and "type-of" hierarchies. for example, learners can use the visualizer to identify the holonym of 'पान' (leaf) as 'झाड'(tree) or to list hyponyms for 'प्राणी'(animal), helping them grasp categorical relationships. this structured method ensures a hands-on, interactive learning experience that fosters a deeper understanding of lexical and semantic connections in the konkani language. to further evaluate the konkani wordnet visualizer as a teaching-learning tool, we conducted empirical testing with a small group of linguists and language educators. this study aimed to assess the tool's effectiveness in enhancing the understanding of lexical relationships in the konkani language. initially, participants were introduced to the concept of wordnets and the various types of semantic and lexical relations it encompasses. this foundational explanation provided the participants with the necessary background to engage with the tool effectively. following the introduction, participants were given a pre-test questionnaire comprising multiple-choice questions. these questions were designed to assess their baseline understanding of lexical relationships and included tasks like identifying synonyms for a word, choosing the correct meronym, or suggesting a top-level hypernym, etc. after completing the pre-test, participants were encouraged to interact with the konkani wordnet visualizer on its website. they were asked to explore the lexical database by searching for specific words and examining their semantic relationships. after this exploratory session, a post-test was conducted using a similar set of multiple-choice questions. the purpose of the post-test was to measure any improvements in their understanding of the lexical relationships as facilitated by the visualizer. the results indicated a noticeable improvement in participants' ability to correctly identify and analyze lexical relations, demonstrating the tool's potential as an effective resource for teaching and learning linguistic concepts. building on our initial study, we have initiated the process of conducting the same experiment with students across various academic levels, including language learners, to further evaluate the konkani word-net visualizer's effectiveness as a teaching-learning tool. this expanded study aims to verify the visualizer's capability to help students grasp linguistic concepts more quickly and effectively. additionally, we plan to assess whether the tool aids in improving their memory retention, comprehension, and reflexive abilities. by analyzing these aspects, we seek to establish the visualizer's broader educational value and its potential to enhance cognitive learning processes in language education. ## future work the konkani wordnet visualizer can be enhanced both in terms of functionality and visual appeal to improve interactivity. these improvements can be achieved by leveraging our publicly available implementation on github. additionally, a gloss definition for each word can be incorporated into the visualizer in future iterations, similar to the implementation in vi-suwords 5 . this integration of gloss definitions, where users retrieve explanations for words like 'वे ळ' and analyze their contextual relevance. although this tool has been tested by a small group of language experts, a broader empirical evaluation is currently underway. this involves actual users, specifically students, engaging with the visualizer tool. their performance will be assessed more systematically to gain deeper insights into the tool's effectiveness as a teaching and learning resource. more user-focused applications are in development, with a particular emphasis on word pronunciations for spoken konkani language learning. looking ahead, we plan to incorporate an image module into the visualizer to create more interactive learning tools for individuals who are not familiar with reading or typing in konkani. ## conclusion we have worked towards enhancing the konkani word-net by integrating a visualizer specifically designed to simplify the browsing and exploration of its lexical database. the visualizer incorporates features that make it user-friendly and flexible, allowing users to easily interact with and understand the data. additionally, we have utilized the tree-structured representation of the wordnet to create a small application that helps konkani language teachers and learners. this application is particularly effective for understanding semantic relationships, such as whole-part (holonymymeronymy) and type-of (hypernymy-hyponymy) connections between konkani words and concepts. the visualizer serves as both a tool for linguistic exploration and a teaching aid for understanding key language concepts. by providing a clear and interactive graphical interface, it supports users in learning and remembering linguistic structures more effectively. ongoing testing and evaluation, including trials with students and educators, aim to assess its potential for improving language learning outcomes. this initiative contributes to the development of resources for lowresource languages like konkani, supporting language preservation efforts and promoting the use of modern tools in linguistic education.