Nicoletta Calzolari – författare

Computational lexicography is a fast-growing field with implications for a wide range of disciplines--theoretical linguistics, computational linguistics, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence--as well as for the construction of dictionaires. The `Grosseto Workshop' was an event which broke new ground. It brought together for the first time an international and interdisciplinary group of researchers concerned with computational lexicography. These papers, selected from the workshop, have provided a baseline and a reference point for further research on problems associated with the lexicon. The collection is not merely of historical interest: it addresses many issues that are still debated today and that guide current research and development.

The relation between ontologies and language is currently at the forefront of natural language processing (NLP). Ontologies, as widely used models in semantic technologies, have much in common with the lexicon. A lexicon organizes words as a conventional inventory of concepts, while an ontology formalizes concepts and their logical relations. A shared lexicon is the prerequisite for knowledge-sharing through language, and a shared ontology is the prerequisite for knowledge-sharing through information technology. In building models of language, computational linguists must be able to accurately map the relations between words and the concepts that they can be linked to. This book focuses on the technology involved in enabling integration between lexical resources and semantic technologies. It will be of interest to researchers and graduate students in NLP, computational linguistics, and knowledge engineering, as well as in semantics, psycholinguistics, lexicology and morphology/syntax.

With this volume in honour of Don Walker, Linguistica Computazionale con­ tinues the series of special issues dedicated to outstanding personalities who have made a significant contribution to the progress of our discipline and maintained a special collaborative relationship with our Institute in Pisa. I take the liberty of quoting in this preface some of the initiatives Pisa and Don Walker have jointly promoted and developed during our collaboration, because I think that they might serve to illustrate some outstanding features of Don''s personality, in particular his capacity for identifying areas of potential convergence among the different scientific communities within our field and establishing concrete forms of coop­ eration. These initiatives also testify to his continuous and untiring work, dedi­ cated to putting people into contact and opening up communication between them, collecting and disseminating information, knowledge and resources, and creating shareable basic infrastructures needed for progress in our field. Our collaboration began within the Linguistics in Documentation group of the FID and continued in the framework of the !CCL (International Committee for Computational Linguistics). In 1982 this collaboration was strengthened when, at CO LING in Prague, I was invited by Don to join him in the organization of a series of workshops with participants of the various communities interested in the study, development, and use of computational lexica.

This collection of papers is dedicated to Don Walker. The technical content of these papers reflects his guidance and direction; his understanding of the relevance of the theories from related disciplines such as linguistics, psychology, and philosophy; and his dream of the future availability of electronic documents and the potential of this as a resource for corpus-based analysis. This led him to an interdisciplinary role as a primary mover in the push to standardize the acquisition and tagging of electronic text, an endeavour that brought together people from fields as distinct as publishing, the humanities and computer science. His widespread interests are mirrored in the collection of papers in this volume, which portray different approaches and different styles.

With this volume in honour of Don Walker, Linguistica Computazionale con­ tinues the series of special issues dedicated to outstanding personalities who have made a significant contribution to the progress of our discipline and maintained a special collaborative relationship with our Institute in Pisa. I take the liberty of quoting in this preface some of the initiatives Pisa and Don Walker have jointly promoted and developed during our collaboration, because I think that they might serve to illustrate some outstanding features of Don's personality, in particular his capacity for identifying areas of potential convergence among the different scientific communities within our field and establishing concrete forms of coop­ eration. These initiatives also testify to his continuous and untiring work, dedi­ cated to putting people into contact and opening up communication between them, collecting and disseminating information, knowledge and resources, and creating shareable basic infrastructures needed for progress in our field. Our collaboration began within the Linguistics in Documentation group of the FID and continued in the framework of the !CCL (International Committee for Computational Linguistics). In 1982 this collaboration was strengthened when, at CO LING in Prague, I was invited by Don to join him in the organization of a series of workshops with participants of the various communities interested in the study, development, and use of computational lexica.