Lexical Markup Framework (LMF)

LMF is the ISO standard for Natural Language Processing (NLP) lexicons and Machine Readable Dictionaries (MRD). The ISO code number for LMF is ISO-24613:2008.

LMF has been developed under the aegis of TC37/SC4 by Gil Francopoulo and Monte George as editors and with Nicoletta Calzolari as convenor. We particularly thank the 60 colleagues that helped us.

LMF combines the best designs and methods from many existing NLP lexicons. The first step in developing LMF was to design an overall framework based on the general features of existing lexicons and to develop a consistent terminology to describe the components of those lexicons. The next step was the actual design of a comprehensive model that best represented all of the lexicons in detail. A large panel of experts contributed a wide range of requirements for LMF that covered many types of NLP lexicons. The editors of LMF worked closely with the panel of experts to identify the best solutions and reach a concensus on the design of LMF. Special attention was paid to the morphology in order to provide powerful mechanisms for handling problems in several languages that were known as difficult to handle. After 5 years of work, including numerous face-to-face meetings and E-mail exchanges, we arrived at a coherent UML model. In conclusion, LMF should be considered a synthesis of the state of the art in NLP lexicon field.

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