How to Make a Semantic Dictionary of Spanish Causative Verbs: Design, Progress, and Roadmap of an Ongoing Lexicographical Project

This talk presents the ongoing lexicographical project “Diccionario Semántico de Verbos Causativos del Español (DIVERCE)” (Wong García, 2022). Founded on a semantic model of causality (Wong García, 2020) that synthesises and expands on classic knowledge in cognitive semantics (Talmy, 2000), and applying established and relevant lexicographical theory (Atkins & Rundell, 2008; Dickerson et al., 2004; Porto Dapena, 2002; Rasmussen, 2014), DIVERCE will be a digital semantic and ideographic dictionary of Spanish causative verbs, aimed at Spanish-speaking users, native or otherwise. The main goal so far has been designing the dictionary’s macrostructure (overall organisation, including access routes) and microstructure (local organisation, entry structure). This has involved the selection of an initial lexicon through analysis of lexicographical definitions in two main sources (Moliner, 2008; Real Academia Española, 2014), the semantic decomposition of selected verbs using a sufficiently expressive apparatus based on the adopted model, verifying specific meanings in a reference corpus (Real Academia Española, 2021), and creating the end-user profile needed for a functional approach to lexicography. This work has allowed us to design the dictionary’s database—a complex relational database built on SQL, although migration to the free and open-source MySQL is planned—that will contain all the information provided by the dictionary. DIVERCE will offer a detailed description of the semantic field of causative verbs in Spanish, which will be useful as both a reference tool and an instrument for hypothesis formation and testing. Other uses could be found in corpus annotation and, combined with a reasoning system, in Natural Language Processing.