MRDs, Standards and How To Do Lexical Engineering

Roger Evans and Adam Kilgarriff
ITRI-95-19
October, 1995

How can you obtain a satisfactory lexicon for a modern NLP
application? Ten years ago the answer you might have received was to
wait for the large-scale lexicons soon to be derived from
machine-readable dictionaries (MRDs). Five years ago the advice would
have proclaimed the virtue of standards; these were currently being
agreed, and once that was done, easy-to-use lexical resources
complying with them would become available.  Today, earlier optimism
on these fronts is muted.  In this position paper, we explore the
history and background and present an alternative methodology for
effective lexical engineering in the medium term.