The Verbmobil semantic database

Abstract

The distributed development of the modules of a large natural language processing system at different sites makes interface definitions a vital issue. It becomes even more urgent when several modules with the same intended functionality are developed in parallel and should be indistinguishable with respect to their input—output—behaviour. Another important issue is the acquisition and maintenance of lexical information which should be stored independently of an application to make it (re)usable for different purposes. This paper describes the design and use of the Verbmobil Semantic Database which we developed in order to deal with these issues in the area of lexical semantics in Verbmobil.