D yna M orph P ro: A New Diachronic and Multilingual Lexical Resource in the LLOD ecosystem (2025)

Abstract: This paper describes the release as Linguistic Linked Open Data of DynaMorphPro, a lexical resource recording loanwords, conversions and class-shifts from Latin to Old Italian. We show how existing vocabularies are reused and integrated to allow for a rich semantic representation of these data. Our main reference is the OntoLex-lemon model for lexical information, but classes and properties from many other ontologies are also reused to express other aspects. In particular, we identify the CIDOC Concept Reference Model as the ideal tool to convey chronological information on historical processes of lexical innovation and change, and describe how it can be integrated with OntoLex-lemon.

## introduction in the last decade, remarkable efforts have been made aiming to allow for a rich semantic modelling of linguistic information. researchers and practitioners working in this framework have called attention to the need of data to be fair, i.e., findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable @xcite , so as to maximise their exploitation for different purposes. to this aim, they have strived to follow the principles of the semantic web and of linked open data @xcite , making machine-readable structured data available with open licenses in non-proprietary formats, following standards and guidelines developed by the world wide web consortium (w3c) -namely, the rdf data model @xcite to encode information and the sparql query language @xcite to retrieve it -and linking data from different sources, so as to create a virtuous ecosystem of interoperability. data of this kind have nowadays reached a remarkable coverage both in terms of number of languages and in terms of types of resources, as summarised by the graph provided in the linguistic linked open data cloud. 1 not only are many languages represented by virtue of individual resources, but recent years have witnessed the emergence of projects aiming at increasing the interconnection between the various resources available for a single language specifically. for instance, the lila (linking latin) project built a knowledge base of interoperable resources for latin @xcite ), foot_1 that currently includes 15 corpora pertaining to different epochs and 16 lexical resources documenting different aspects (such as semantics, etymology, polarity, morphology), and open to continuous additions and enrichments. in the wake of this effort, similar projects have been undertaken for other languages, e.g. liita (linking italian; cf. @xcite 3 and molor (morphologically linked old irish resource; cf. @xcite . best practices have been defined for many of the facets of language-related information that can be taken into consideration. a crucial prerequisite for such an enterprise is being able to model and harmonise the categories used for language description. to this aim, on the one hand, terminological repositories have been gathered including as many of the necessary categories as possible, and potentially expandable if needed, such as gold, @xcite and @xcite ; on the other hand, strategies have been devised to be able to accommodate the slightly different usage that can be made of such categories in different contexts, as can be done by means of the ontologies of linguistic annotations (olia; cf. @xcite . these categories can then be used to represent the information provided in language resources of different kinds, including both textual and lexical resources. for textual resources, there are rdfcompliant formats for their release such as conll-rdf @xcite , and vocabularies that allow to model the annotations that can be added to corpora at different levels, such as powla @xcite . on top of that, the nlp interchange format aims to achieve interoperability between resources of different kinds, their annotation, and nlp tools @xcite . for lexical resources, the de-facto standard is the ontolex-lemon vocabulary @xcite , that consists of a core model and several modules for more specific information (see section 2). in this work, we build on such previous efforts to release as linguistic linked open data (llod) the lexical database gathered and used by @xcite to explore the dynamics of morphological productivity in noun inflection from latin to italian -hence the name, dynamorphpro. while these data are not very extensive in terms of number of entries, they provide rich and structured information on several aspects. they are multilingual: latin and italian are the primary object of inquiry, but many other languages appear as also the etymology of loanwords is provided. morphological information is provided regarding both inflection classes and derivation -mostly, conversions. diachrony is also involved as cases of shifts from one class to another are documented, and the time at which they are attested is specified (see section 3). we show how we exploit the potential of the llod ecosystem to offer a rich semantic modelling of these data. on the one hand, languagespecific projects for latin (lila) and italian (li-ita) allow for interoperability with other resources for those languages. on the other hand, the ontolex-lemon model gives us ways to represent many of the pieces of information provided, including morphology (with morph, see section 2) and attestation in texts (with frac, see section 2). for other pieces of information, we make proposals to integrate other vocabularies, such as lemon-ety @xcite for etymology and cidoc-crm @xcite for time information. the remainder of this paper is structured as follows. in section 2, we review previous work and describe the existing vocabularies on which our own model is based. in section 3, we describe the data, giving some background on the original aims and overall structure of the resource, and further details on the information it provides. in section 4, we outline our model, showing how we reused existing vocabularies and the new classes and properties that we introduced. in section 5, we describe the process of linking entries of our resource to lemmas of the knowledge bases available for latin (lila) and italian (liita). section 6 concludes and highlights possibilities for future work. ## the data the original data are extracted from a monograph by @xcite , which explores the evolution of the productivity of the noun inflection classes of latin and old italian. the goal of @xcite was to better understand the mechanisms that guide and constrain natural grammar, specifically what factors determine changes in the productivity of inflection classes, leading to the emergence of new ones, an increased or decreased degree of productivity through to the loss of extant ones. the object languages -latin and old italian -were chosen among other reasons because they are well-documented and embody a diachronic development spanning almost 2,000 years: the latin data range from the leges duodecim tabularum (451-450 bce) to late latin (200-600) and early medieval latin (600-800); the data of old italian, as one of its continuers, range from indovinello veronese (early 9th century) through 1375 (1400). the data were analyzed by applying a metric of productivity originally proposed by @xcite and there revised, based on a hierarchy of criteria reflecting the degree of impediment which a lexeme has to face when it is integrated into a specific inflection class. productivity is here defined as "the force of attraction that inflectional patterns exert on new lexemes (both foreign and native in origin) and on extant paradigms of native lexemes" (gardani, 2013, p. 39). inflection class productivity was measured on historical synchronic cuts, on the basis of the investigation of loanword integration, conversions, and class shift, with the data on the integration of loanwords being drawn from the contact languages ancient greek, germanic, arabic, byzantine greek, and old french. the elaboration of the diachronic outline was encompassed by connecting the productivity degrees measured at each synchronic cut. the diachronic trajectory shows a progressive reduction in the number of the inflection classes from a total of at least 21 in latin to a total of nine in old italian. @xcite showed that in the analyzed languages, the dynamics of growth and emergence of inflection classes are linked to the need of creating or restoring biunique relationships with respect to the realization of specific morphosyntactic features. the resource provides rich and highly structured data on 2,434 lexical entries. all of them have been openly released on the basis of the model described in the rest of this paper. the primary data subdivision regards the language: entries are grouped into latin (1,120) and old italian (1,314) items. 13 each group is further divided into loanwords, conversions and class shifts. additionally, each lexical entry is enriched with different types of further information: some pieces of information are shared by lexical entries of all types, while other ones are found only in relation with specific types. all the entries regardless of their category are provided with a short definition of their meaning and with details pertaining to their first attestation. the latter may include information about the author and/or the document in which the word first appeared; for old italian entries, in many cases this is accompanied by a full reference to the text where the attestation is found; sometimes the geographical area and date of the attestation are supplied as well. for old italian entries, the language variety of the attestation is often provided (e.g. fior. for the variety spoken in florence). additionally, each lexical entry is classified by its inflection microclass, identified by an exemplary lexeme (e.g., rosa rosae 'rose' for latin, or casa case 'house' for old italian), which is defined as a "set of paradigms which 13 sometimes, this requires a further specification, such as the identification of a more specific variety (e.g. vulgar latin), or an indication of the fact that the first attestation of an old italian loanword is still considered as a latin form. loanwords, conversions and class shifts are also provided with additional information specific to their own characteristics. for loanwords, the etymon is supplied, together with the specification of its language. with regard to latin, this can be etruscan, ancient greek or a germanic language, foot_12 while for old italian, loanwords can be traced back to a germanic language, byzantine greek, arabic or old french. another relevant information provided in the case of loanwords concerns the (in)compatibility between the inflection microclass of the etymon, and that of the loanword itself (gardani, 2013 pp. 39-41; see 4.1 for further details). for each conversion, the base verb from which it was derived and the latter's inflection microclass are provided. finally, each class shift is provided with rich information about the entry in the original class, including its meaning, the etymon and the inflection microclass. in some cases, additional morphological information (e.g., the ending of the plural form or the genitive form) is also provided. ## the model in this section, we show how the reference vocabularies mentioned in section 2 have been exploited to model the data described in section 3, as well as the new classes and properties that we needed to introduce to allow for a complete representation of all the available information. we do that by providing examples and commenting on them in detail, with a focus on lexical information in subsection 4.1, on historical and chronological information in subsection 4.2 and on citations and references in subsection 4.3. ## conclusions and future work in this paper, we have described the release of the dynamorphpro lexicon, foot_18 that documents loanwords, conversions and class-shifts from latin to old italian, and located it within the llod ecosystem. by leveraging established models -such as ontolex-lemon for lexical information, cidoc-crm and owl-time for historical and chronological information, fabio and biro for citations and references -and integrating them with specialised extensions -like morph for morphology, frac for attestations and lemonety for etymology -we have been able to provide a rich semantic modelling of the data recorded in the resource. furthermore, the linking to the knowledge bases of lila for latin and liita for italian has ensured interoperability with other resources included in there, maximising the reusability of data for other purposes. an interesting possibility for future work would be to extend such a strategy to entries in other languages -namely, those that are provided as etymons of the entries in the main languages. for instance, many latin loanwords come from ancient greek. as a consequence, several pieces of information are provided for many etymons in that language. since a project for the creation of a wikibase for ancient greek is currently being undertaken, 22 it would be useful to link etymons to uris in that project as soon as possible. a similar strategy could also be applied to all other languages for which similar projects will eventually arise.