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Prolexbase: a Multilingual Relational Lexical Database of Proper Names

This paper deals with a multilingual relational lexical database of proper name, Prolexbase, a free resource available on the CNRTL website. The Prolex model is based on two main concepts: firstly, a language independent pivot and, secondly, the prolexeme (the projection of the pivot onto particular language), that is a set of lemmas (names and derivatives). These two concepts model the variations of proper name: firstly, independent of language and, secondly, language dependent by morphology or knowledge. Variation processing is very important for NLP: the same proper name can be written in different instances, maybe in different parts of speech, and it can also be replaced by another one, a lexical anaphora (that reveals semantic link). The pivot represents different referent’s points of view, i.e. language independent variations of name. Pivots are linked by three semantic relations (quasi-synonymy, partitive relation and associative relation). The prolexeme is a set of variants (aliases), quasi-synonyms and morphosemantic derivatives. Prolexemes are linked to classifying contexts and reliability code.