lexova

Lexova is a modular framework for representing lexical-semantic data across languages. Designed to support interoperable multilingual dictionaries, thesauri, and lexical resources, Lexova emphasizes graph-based modeling that connects lexical entries, senses, and semantic relations.

The data model centers on three primary node types: LexicalEntry, Sense, and Concept, with edges representing relations such as synonymy, antonymy, hypernymy, usage relations, and cross-language links. Each LexicalEntry links to one or more Senses; each Sense carries definitions, examples, and domain tags. Cross-language alignment links senses to corresponding senses in other languages, enabling multilingual retrieval and translation memory. The framework supports standard serialization formats such as RDF and JSON-LD and is compatible with graph databases and triplestores.

History: Lexova originated in theoretical discussions in the field of computational linguistics and lexical resources in the late 2010s as a proposal to unify diverse lexicon resources. It is not a formal standard; implementations have remained exploratory and research-focused, with various groups prototyping data models and tooling.

Applications: Potential use cases include cross-language information retrieval, multilingual lexicography, bilingual dictionaries, semantic search, and language-resource integration. Benefits include improved interoperability and richer cross-language connections; challenges include data quality control, licensing variation, and the complexity of managing multilingual senses and domain tags.

See also: Lexicon, Semantic network, Multilingual dictionary.