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Theory and Applications of Ontology: Computer Applications pp 231–243Cite as

WordNet

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Abstract

WordNet is a large electronic lexical database for English (Miller 1995, Fellbaum 1998a). It originated in 1986 at Princeton University where it continues to be developed and maintained. George A. Miller, a psycholinguist, was inspired by experiments in Artificial Intelligence that tried to understand human semantic memory (e.g., Collins and Quillian 1969). Given the fact that speakers possess knowledge about tens of thousands of words and the concepts expressed by these words, it seemed reasonable to assume efficient and economic storage and access mechanisms for words and concepts. The Collins and Quillian model proposed a hierarchical structure of concepts, where more specific concepts inherit information from their superordinate, more general concepts; only knowledge particular to more specific concepts needs to be stored with such concepts. Thus, it took subjects longer to confirm a statement like “canaries have feathers” than the statement “birds have feathers” since, presumably, the property “has-feathers” is stored with the concept bird and not redundantly with the concept for each kind of bird.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For critical reviews of WordNet, see Kilgarriff (2000) and Lin (1999).

  2. 2.

    We will refer to the Princeton WordNet as “WordNet” and databases in other languages as “wordnets,” indicating the fact that the proper name WordNet has become a common noun.

  3. 3.

    Fellbaum and Kegl (1989) argue for lexical gaps in the verb lexicon on syntactic grounds.

  4. 4.

    See the website of the Global WordNet Organization, http:www.globalwordnet.org

  5. 5.

    For a bibliography on WordNet-based work see http://lit.csci.unt.edu/wordnet.

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Acknowledgements

Work partially supported by contracts from The Disruptive Technology Office, REFLEX, and the U.S. National Science Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08540, USA

    Christiane Fellbaum

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  1. Christiane Fellbaum
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Correspondence to Christiane Fellbaum .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dipto. Sociologia e Ricerca Sociale, Universita di Trento, Via Verdi 26, Trento, 38100, Italy

    Roberto Poli

  2. 23rd Place NE., 13544, Seattle, 98125-3325, Washington, USA

    Michael Healy

  3. Computer Technology Institute, Hellenic Open University &, N. Kazantzaki Str., Patras, 265 00, Greece

    Achilles Kameas

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Fellbaum, C. (2010). WordNet. In: Poli, R., Healy, M., Kameas, A. (eds) Theory and Applications of Ontology: Computer Applications. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8847-5_10

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