Towards electronic lexicography for the Kurdish language

Abstract

This paper describes the development of lexicographic resources for Kurdish and provides a lexical model for this language. Kurdish is considered a less-resourced language, and currently, lacks machine-readable lexical resources. The unique potential which Linked Data and the Semantic Web offer to e-lexicography enables interoperability across lexical resources by elevating the traditional linguistic data to machine-processable semantic formats. Therefore, we present our lexicon in Ontolex-Lemon ontology as a standard model for sharing lexical information on the Semantic Web. The research covers the Sorani, Kurmanji, and Hawrami dialects of Kurdish. This research suggests that although Kurdish is a less-resourced language, in terms of documented lexicons, it has a wide range of resources, but because they are not machine-readable they could not contribute to the language processing. The outcome of this project, which is made publicly available, assists scholars in their efforts towards making Kurdish a resource-rich language.