[EDLING:1222] Lexicall: A web-site for complete and convenient access to lexical resources

[Tamara Warhol]

via the linguist list . . .

Lexicall: A web-site for complete and convenient access to lexical 
resources

Website: http://lexicall.widged.com/

We would like to introduce Lexical, a website which aims to become a
trusted repository of shared lexical resources, committed to the long-term
accessibility of the archived resources and their appropriate indexing for
research and educational use in the psycholinguistics community.

This repository provides access to four types of materials: (a) data files
providing lexical statistics, (b) scripts and tools for the manipulation of
lexical data, (c) documentation about these resources and their use, and
(d) links to materials relevant to research and teaching activities in
psycholinguistics.

A large range of linguistic materials is covered, including parts of words,
words and non-words, textual and visual material, and experimental datasets
from psycholinguistic studies.

An originality of our approach is that we also provide mechanisms for the
direct querying (for data files) or running (for Unix-compatible scripts)
of files held in the archived resource on the Lexicall website. Metadata
are used to hold information about the lexical resources and parameters for
the mechanisms in place, thus ensuring complete interoperability and
facilitating re-use in different contexts.

Main Features Include:
- Easy to navigate catalogue, with the option to check out items of a given
type (data, tools, links, docs), in a given category (words, parts of
words, etc.), and in a given language.
- Resources in multiple languages.
- RSS feed to keep you informed of the most recent additions
- Direct online querying of some data files (when authorized by the
author). See the results of your query on the screen (limited to 500 lines)
or by email (full listing).
- Regular expressions can be used for pattern matching.
- Community services like Forums, Wiki (holding tutorials)
- Querying interface generated automatically on the basis of a definition
file. This means that additional resources can be made available for query
without requiring any effort on our part and about none on yours. If you
would like the lexical resources developed in your lab to be made available
for online querying to other members of the community, simply use the
form-based procedure at:
http://lexicall.widged.com/repository/add_resources/ or send us an email.
We can cope with any data file organized in columns separated by tabs.
Information about the coding standards can be obtained from:
http://lexicall.widged.com/repository/standards.php

Website: http://lexicall.widged.com/

Feedback and comments welcome.

Note that we are currently working on a parallel project. While Lexicall is
meant to let you query lexical resources online, Taskflow will provide you
with tools on the desktop to manipulate these resources, as briefly
explained at: http://projects.widged.com/taskflow/. We would be interested
to hear about persons ready for doing a bit of beta testing on the taskflow
project. Any platform (PC, Mac, Linux).

Marielle

Linguistic Field(s): Psycholinguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics