LEXUS is web-based lexicon tool developed by the Technical Group at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands (MPI). It is targeted at linguists doing field research or working with language corpora.
In LEXUS users may create lexica in online (but private) workspaces and share lexica with other users either on a read-only basis or by assigning edit rights. Since LEXUS is web-based this sharing functionality allows a group of users to create a lexicon from different places in the world, or to share lexica amongst linguistic researchers and speech community members.
With LEXUS you may create lexica from scratch or import lexica from other formats, like Toolbox or XML. LEXUS is not just another lexicon tool: LEXUS offers the possibility to visualize language through the import of multimedia. Three different types of multimedia fragments can be linked to the lexical entries: images, videos and audio. LEXUS also interacts with media stored on the Internet. For the DoBeS projects, MPI research and for research from third parties, data is stored in the digital archive for linguistic resources housed at the MPI. The archive is accessible via the Internet, and is organized in a structured manner by describing and contextualizing the data with the IMDI metadata set. Lexical entries in LEXUS can be linked to domains and resources in this archive.
Lexicography in general is a domain where uniformity and interoperability have never been the operative words: depending on the purpose and tools used different formats, structures and terminologies are being adopted, which makes cross lexica search, merging, linking and comparison an extremely difficult task. LEXUS is also an attempt at putting an end to this problem. Being based on the Lexical Markup Framework (LMF), an abstract model for the creation of customized lexicons defined following the recommendations of the ISO/TC 37/SC 4 group on the standardization of linguistic terminology, LEXUS allows on the one hand to create purpose-specific and tailor-made lexica, and on at same time assures their comparability and interoperability with other resources.
In LEXUS, each lexicon consists of a structure and of content. Each lexical entry (content) needs to be structured consistent with the defined lexicon structure. For new lexica, the structure of a LEXUS lexicon is predefined and follows the LMF schema given in Figure 1.1 (a). Each of the elements in the schema can be expanded according to the wishes of the creator. Basically there are two ways of elaborating on such a model. You can either add a Data Component, which can be compared to a folder, or a Data Category, which can be compared to a sheet to store relevant linguistic information. The lexicon structure is an hierarchy, in which Data Components are higher in the structure than Data Categories. The former ones are used in order to group elements that have something in common. Form and Sense are the two most basic Data Components. To them you could link a number of other more specific Data Components, which in turn can include other sub-components or Data Categories. In the end all the lexical information of an entry is stored as values of Data Categories. It is up to the user to define the structure of the lexicon and in principle there are no restrictions on it whatsoever. In Figure 1.1 (b) we show a simple example of such a structure.
More information on LMF can be obtained from the LMF web site.
Behind LEXUS is the tool ViCoS, visualizing conceptual spaces. With ViCoS you may extend your lexicon with a set of relations between lexical entries or between specific data category labels withing the lexical entries. ViCoS thus allows the creation of a semantic network and the navigation through this network. Since ViCoS also allows the creation of user or lexicon specific relation types, the network that can be created go beyond the semantic into the cultural level. The created conceptual spaces show the words or attributes within the cultural contexts. For more information on ViCoS or the ViCoS manual see the LAT page: http://www.lat-mpi.eu/tools/vicos
For the best functioning of LEXUS and ViCoS, we advice to use the newest version of Mozzila Firefox browser with a minimum screen resolution of 1280 x 1024.