Linking the L exicala L atin- F rench Dictionary to the L i L a Knowledge Base (2025)

Abstract: This paper presents the integration of the Lexicala Latin–French Dictionary into the LiLa Knowledge Base of linguistic resources for Latin made interoperable through their publication as Linked Open Data. The entries of the dictionary are linked to the large collection of Latin lemmas of LiLa (Lemma Bank), enabling interaction with the other resources published therein. The paper details the data modelling process, the linking methodology, and a couple of practical use cases, showing how interlinking resources via LOD can support advancement in (multilingual) linguistic research.

## introduction over the past two decades, numerous linguistic resources have been developed for a wide range of languages. in particular, resources for latin have expanded substantially, resulting in the creation of many annotated corpora, such as treebanks (including five published under the universal dependencies initiative; see de marneffe et al., 2021), as well as additional textual and lexical resources of both born-digital and non-digital origins. among the many resources for latin, father busa's index tomisticus (initiated in 1949) was pioneering in the field (busa, 1974-1980), comprising 11 million words from the opera omnia of thomas aquinas. another noteworthy contribution is the textual corpus developed by the lasla laboratory at the university of liège, foot_0 which includes 130 classical latin texts (fantoli et al., 2024) by major authors such as caesar, cicero, horatius, and ovid, totaling over 1.7 million words (denooz, 2004). a fundamental limitation of most linguistic resources for latin (and, in fact, for many languages) is their isolation from each other, functioning as 'silos' that impede data interaction. establishing interoperability among distributed linguistic resources is currently one of the primary goals in computational linguistics. this objective is now more attainable thanks to the extensive work carried out by the research community devoted to linguistic linked open data (llod). @xcite one particularly significant initiative in this area was nexus linguarum, foot_2 a cost action concluded in 2024, whose main aim was to «promote synergies across europe between linguists, computer scientists, terminologists, and other stakeholders in industry and society, in order to investigate and extend the area of linguistic data science». @xcite for latin specifically, since 2018 the lila project @xcite has pursued the goal of making the numerous available linguistic resources mutually interoperable by following the principles of the linked open data (lod) paradigm (berners-lee et al., 2001). this approach ensures that their (meta)data adhere to the fair principles. @xcite to achieve this, lila has developed a lod knowledge base (kb), whose core is a large collection of lemmas linking tokens in textual resources to entries in lexical resources. through this kb, federated queries can be executed on the interconnected resources via the sparql query language. @xcite lila's efforts to integrate diverse linguistic resources position latin at the forefront of llod initiatives. such efforts are particularly crucial for historical languages, which lack native speakers and newly produced texts, necessitating sustained reliance on available data. moreover, latin data are dispersed across numerous resources, reflecting its extensive diachronic (spanning over two millennia) and diatopic (across europe) ranges. latin also remains widely taught worldwide, resulting in a large number of bilingual dictionaries. @xcite enhancing the interoperability of these dictionaries will benefit not only research on latin texts and language but also the broader llod community, as latin can function as a bridge to other languages, thereby expanding multilingual interoperability through lod. several bilingual dictionaries have already been incorporated into the lila kb, including the lewis and short dictionary for english 9 (mambrini et al., 2022), velez's index totius artis for portuguese @xcite , and the latinitatis medii aevi lexicon bohemorum (dictionary of medieval latin in the czech lands) for czech 11 (gamba et al., 2024). this paper details the modeling and linking of the first bilingual latin-french dictionary -lexicala latin-french dictionary (llfd) -to the lila knowledge base. section 2 provides an overview of lila's architecture. section 3 introduces the lexical resource, outlining its key features and structure. section 4 explains how the dictionary's (meta)data were modeled and integrated into the kb. section 5 then presents two query examples demonstrating the interoperability of this dictionary with other linked resources within lila. finally, section 6 offers concluding remarks and outlines directions for future work. ## the lila knowledge base lila (linking latin) is a large kb of more than 30 latin resources interlinked on the web by fitting the principles of the lod paradigm. @xcite the core of the lila kb consists of a large collection of more than 130,000 latin lexical items for a total of approximately 215,000 lemmas (the so-called lemma bank), to which the entries from lexical resources and the tokens from textual resources are linked by using a vocabulary of (meta)data descrip- the decision to create a lemma bank as the pivot component of lila was aimed at finding a «good balance between feasibility and granularity» while interlinking the resources (passarotti et al., 2020). within the lila-specific ontology, @xcite the class lila:lemma 19 -a subclass of ontolex:form 20 -is defined as «a form that is linked to a lexicalentry via the property 'canonical form'» of ontolex 21 (passarotti et al., 2020). following this structural choice it is possible to link all the lexical resources compiled using the ontolex formalism to lila: each lemma can be used as a connection point among the different resources stored in lila, ensuring interaction and interoperability. as far as textual resources are concerned, occurrences of words in texts (tokens) are modelled as instances of the class terminal 22 in the ontology powla. tokens are linked to their corresponding lemma in the lemma bank of lila by the property lila:haslemma. @xcite 3 lexicala latin-french dictionary llfd 24 is a bilingual dictionary aimed at french-speaking learners of latin at a beginner or intermediate level, developed by k dictionaries. the company creates lexical resources for and across different languages, which «enable infinite ways of extracting components and implementing 13 https://www.w3.org/2016/05/ontolex/ 14 https://persistence.uni-leipzig.org/nlp2rdf/ 15 https://acoli-repo.github.io/olia/ 16 https://www.dublincore.org 17 https://art.uniroma2.it/lime/ 18 http://lila-erc.eu/ontologies/lila/ 19 http://lila-erc.eu/lodview/ontologies/lila/ lemma 20 http://www.w3.org/ns/lemon/ontolex# lexicalform 21 entries in lexical resources are modeled as instances of the class ontolex:lexicalentry ( http://www.w3.org/ ns/lemon/ontolex#lexicalentry ). the uri of the property ontolex:canonicalform is the following: http://www. w3.org/ns/lemon/ontolex#canonicalform . 22 http://purl.org/powla/powla.owl#terminal 23 http://lila-erc.eu/ontologies/lila/haslemma 24 the source data for the resource were provided (in json-ld format) by k dictionaries free of charge as part of an agreement with università cattolica del sacro cuore to publish llfd as lod in the lila kb. today, this series includes more than two dozen languages: the resources for each language are developed independently, covering its main semantic, syntactic and grammatical aspects, while the underlying framework and technical infrastructure is the same for all languages. the monolingual layer of each language can be used on its own or as a core component for adding translations in different languages to create bilingual pairs in a multilingual network. as far as llfd is concerned, the resource contains more than 12,000 entries and 2,000 multiword expressions, which are enriched with 21,000 examples of usage and 38,000 translations. the headwords are selected from latin of the classical era, especially from the period ranging from the 1st century bc to the 1st century ad. the authors most represented in the examples are among the best known of the latin literature, particularly those who lived from the end of the republican period to the first century of the empire, including cicero, caesar, sallust, livy and seneca for prose, and virgil, horace and ovid for poetry. in 2014, k dictionaries began to experiment with linguistic linked data (klimek and brümmer, 2015; bosque-gil et al., 2016), and the global series was utilized in the development of the ontolex-4 modelling and linking the dictionary ## use cases as a result of the linking process described in the previous section, llfd has been integrated into the lila kb 59 and interconnected with the other linguistic resources available therein. the lod publication of the dictionary in lila enables users to query its data through the lila sparql endpoint. @xcite the following subsections present two examples of basic sparql queries that demonstrate the added value of the integration of the dictionary with various resources in the lila kb. these examples illustrate how the interoperability of resources published as lod facilitates data exploration and enhances empirically-based linguistic research. ## conclusions and future work in this paper, we have detailed the integration of lexicala latin-french dictionary as linked open data (lod) within the lila knowledge base. thanks to lila's architecture and its firm grounding in ontologies and models widely adopted by the lod community, the dictionary has become fully interoperable with a rich ecosystem of other linguistic resources for latin. these include tex-tual corpora totaling over 12 million words, and a number of lexical resources, like a few bilingual dictionaries, a wordnet, and a derivational morphological lexicon. @xcite as a result, french-speaking learners of latin at beginner and intermediate levels, as well as researchers, can now seamlessly traverse a web of interconnected lexical information, dramatically enhancing the utility and reach of the original dictionary. moreover, by bringing together multiple bilingual dictionaries and two etymological resources in lila, new avenues for multilingual research and cross-linguistic resource linking emerge. the recent development of a lemma bank for italian in the liita knowledge base 89 (litta et al., 2024), following the lila model, further demonstrates the potential of this interlinking approach. envisioning a network of similar lemma banks for different languages, all interconnected via bilingual dictionaries, points to a substantial leap forward in harnessing linguistic empirical evidence across diverse resources and languages. the publication of llfd in lila highlights how interconnected data can enrich linguistic research. by adhering to widely recognized lod best practices, we have ensured that this dictionary can be integrated and reused alongside other resources for latin and beyond.