The LU node

The LU is defined as the identifier of a single meaning. The meaning of "meaning" can be specified by a semantic theory (if there is one available) or it can refer to the intuitive notion used by traditional lexicography to separate the meanings listed under the canonical forms.
Blocks of features are associated to the LU (See Annex number two ``THE MONOLINGUAL ARCHITECTURE SCHEMA"):

• one and only one semantic block,
• one or more syntactic blocks,
• zero or more bilingual transfer blocks.

Semantics

Two different approaches to semantics have been proposed in the MULTILEX project:

• Logically regimented explanation of ordinary language entries from existing dictionaries (developed at the University of Bochum, Germany).
• Metalinguistic constructs based on a set of semantic features (developed at the University of Pisa, Italy).

Both these theories are compatible with the MULTILEX standard, and they provide valuable guidance to dictionary designers. However, the objective is not to fix and impose a semantic approach, but to help identify, clarify and compare pieces of lexical information in order to facilitate lexicon design, usage and re-use. Choosing one semantic theory would exclude all - or nearly all - the others. Also, at present, there is no available multilingual lexical resource large enough to demonstrate universal validity of a single semantic theory. There is still an enormous amount of work to do before some uncontroversial results are achieved.

As for the core standard, at least a text definition, as in paper dictionaries, should be given as semantic information for human disambiguation purposes.

Syntax

In most cases, one syntactic structure is related to a single meaning. Therefore for most of the LUs one syntactic description should be sufficient to cover the syntactic behaviour. However, variant syntactic structures may express exactly the same meaning. Straightforward cases can be dealt with without doubling the syntactic description block by operating at attribute and value level.

• Specific attributes
  For example, "to give someone something" is equivalent to "to give something to someone". Since this particularity concerns many verbs and since it is language dependant, a specific syntactic attribute is created to convey this information.
• Multi-valued attributes
  The syntactic variation often affects a single isolated element, e.g. a preposition. For example, a meaning of the French verb "comparer" can be expressed either by both the syntactic structures "comparer quelquechose à autre chose" and "comparer quelquechose avec autre chose". à can be substituted to avec and vice-versa without additional change to the structure. For unconstrained alternate variations, multi-valued attributes can be used. More than one attribute of the syntactic description can receive multi-values, if all the possible combinations of values are compatible.

When the variation cannot be expressed by these means, or if the design of a dictionary requires that each syntactic variation be represented in a single block, it is possible to define as many syntactic blocks as needed and to relate them to the same LU.

Examples of syntactic behaviours can be included within each syntactic block. It is highly recommended to use this possibility.