VERBAL RELATIONS IN THE POLISH WORDNET

This paper presents an overview of verbal relations in the Polish WordNet (plWN). The author introduces a working distinction between 'relations between synsets' and 'relations between lexical units' and discusses both groups separately. The basic relation building up the base is synonymy as defined in Apresjan (2000). Lexical units linked by synonymy form sets of synonyms, or synsets, which further build the structure of the database and serve as the only means to specify senses of words. Another verbal relation defined in plWN is troponymy, which links: (i) a general verb denoting some action and a more specific one denoting performing this action in some particular way, (ii) verbs and their quasi-aspectual derivatives. Further, he defines and discusses antonymy, which groups all relations of contrast as defined in Lyons (1984) except for conversion, which is defined separately following Apresjan (2000). Relatedness holds between lexical units that are morphologically related, for example between verbs and their derivatives. The relation of entailment links verbs into pairs in which the activity denoted by one of the units is conditioned by the other. Hyponymy and hyperonymy belong to the second group of relations and form the hierarchical structure of plWN, linking superordinate lexical units, called Verbal Relations in the Polish WordNet 235 hyperonyms, with subordinate ones, called hyponyms. Although two separate names are used, we talk in fact about the same relation, which is characterised by reversibility and transitivity. Finally, the author summarizes the most important features of verbal relations in the Polish WordNet as compared to the Princeton WordNet and EuroWordNet, focusing on the existing differences in defining verbal hyponymy.