The First Computational Lexicon of Ugo Ferrandi's Notebook Terminology

The First Computational Lexicon of Ugo Ferrandi's Notebook Terminology Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics: Bridging the Red Sea Rift - Somali Workshop IV 13 giugno, 2024 Silvia Piccini, Jama Musse Jama, Giuliana E. V. Ruiz and Michela Bandini OVERVIEW Università di Napoli L’Orientale, 13 giugno 2023 AIM: Illustrate current developments in the construction of a bilingual Somali-Italian computational lexicon in the context of a project funded by the organisation Rut Ets Foundation, through a strategic partnership with the Institute of Computational Linguistics A. Zampolli (ILC-CNR), the Italian CLARIN node and the Società Geografica Italiana ➢ dates back to the time of the colonialist expansion of Italy in Africa ➢ dedicated to the terminology collected by the Italian explorer Ugo Ferrandi (1852 - 1928) ●Provide a linguistic and terminological insight about the notebooks’ data ●Describe the onto-terminological resource: ➢ OntoLex-Lemon model ➢ SIMPLE model ●Focus on the Somali musical instrument class from a linguistic and a conceptual point of view ❖Born in Novara on January 6, 1852 ❖Long-distance captain previously enrolled at the Nautica Institute in Genoa ❖Played a fundamental role in Italian colonialist politics under the Crispi government ❖Member of the expedition commanded by A. Franzoj to Harrar in 1886 ❖Commercial agent for the Bienenfeld Company in Aden ❖Delegate for the Commercial Exploration Company in Milan ❖Member of expeditions along Juba River from Brava to Badera UGO FERRANDI (1852 - 1928) Università di Napoli L’Orientale, 13 giugno 2023 ❖Took part in the second expedition led by Vittorio Bottego and sponsored by the Società Geografica Italiana (SGI) in 1895 ❖Nominated commander of the commercial station at Lugh ❖A strategic trading hub located in the Benadir region of western Somalia ❖Meticulously recorded his 2-years observations in notebooks THE EXPLORER’S NOTEBOOKS ❖Published in 1903 by Società Geografica Italiana under the title “Lugh. Emporio commerciale sul Giuba” ❖A source of historical, anthropological, and ethnographic value ❖Description of many aspects of the material and cultural universe of Somalia at the dawn of the 20th century (i.e. fauna, folklore, clothing, artifacts, weapons, etc.) ❖Structure: notebooks and glossary in appendix ❖A mine of terminological information: Ferrandi provides a plethora of indigenous terms while describing the Somali universe Università di Napoli L’Orientale, 13 giugno 2023 The Notebook Glossary QUANTITATIVE DATA OF FERRANDI’S TERMINOLOGY Università di Napoli L’Orientale, 13 giugno 2023 ❖A comprehensive overview of the Somali realia ranging from flora and fauna, to dwellings, wedding and funerary rites, customs, folklore, festivals, clothing, games, religion, superstitions, agriculture and livestock, furnishings, social organisation, weapons, etc. ❖A veritable mine of terminological information: they contain a wealth of specialised terminology related to Somali culture. ❖More than 400 Somali terms have been manually extracted, covering the whole range of semantic fields. 35 66 5 QUANTITATIVE DATA OF FERRANDI’S TERMINOLOGY Università di Napoli L’Orientale, 13 giugno 2023 More than 400 Somali terms have been manually extracted, covering a huge range of semantic fields 35 66 5 LINGUISTIC SENSITIVITY OF FERRANDI Università di Napoli L’Orientale, 13 giugno 2023 ❖Somali terms are highlighted in italics within the text ❖Italian translation is often provided as italian terms or as perifrasis: ➢within the text ➢in the glossary ❖Examples: baccara; dura; dil tologno LINGUISTIC SENSITIVITY OF FERRANDI - Dialects Università di Napoli L’Orientale, 13 giugno 2023 ❖Ferrandi specifies the dialect of the term: ➢within the text ➢in the glossary ❖He distinguishes three Somali dialects: ➢Rahanuìn (r) → Maay or Central Somali dialect ➢Somali (s) → dialect known as common Somali ➢Lughiano (l)→ to be identified ❖Examples: burma and deri; han and dil bint LINGUISTIC SENSITIVITY OF FERRANDI - Affiliations Università di Napoli L’Orientale, 13 giugno 2023 ❖Ferrandi specifies the linguistic affiliation of terms associating them with languages spoken by neighbouring tribes/populations such as: ➢Swahili ➢Galla (probably Oromo) ➢Arabic ❖Affiliation/etymological information is provided: ➢within the text ➢in the glossary ❖Examples: parapanda; goma; sarir or harar WHAT IS AN ONTOLOGY? Università di Napoli L’Orientale, 13 giugno 2023 “An ontology is an explicit specification of a conceptualization” (Gruber, 1993) “An ontology is a formal specification of a shared conceptualization” (Borst, 1997) “An ontology is a formal, explicit specification of a shared conceptualization” (Studer, 1998) An ontology is an abstract, structured, calculator-interpretable model that defines in a non-ambiguous and consensual manner the concepts, relationships and other distinctions necessary for the conceptual modeling of the knowledge of a domain. WHAT IS AN ONTOLOGY? Components of an ontology: ❖Classes: concepts, i.e., sets of objects that share the same properties, typically arranged in reticular structures or taxonomies; ❖Instances: individuals or objects that populate the classes of the ontology; ❖Relations (also called roles): they specify how classes and individuals can be related to each other; ❖Axioms: assertions (including rules) expressed in logical form to bind the values of classes or instances. Università di Napoli L’Orientale, 13 giugno 2023 REPRESENTING THE LEXICON: OntoLex-Lemon Lexicon model for Ontologies - CORE Module ❖de facto standard for publishing lexicons as RDF triples ❖modular structure that allows a description of terms ❖maintains a separation between the linguistic dimension and conceptual dimension. Università di Napoli L’Orientale, 13 giugno 2023 ➔Somali terms are defined as Lexical Entry ➔Grammatical realizations of LE are described in morphological details and associated with a written\phonetic representation as Lexical Form ➔One or more senses of the LE are provided (Lexical Sense ) linguistic dimension conceptual dimension LOD principles Semantic Web technologies ➔The sense is also defined at the level of the conceptual entry with the relation reference/isReferenceOf ➔Each LE is connected to an Ontology Entity through denotes/is DenotedBy ➔Definition drawn from Ferrandi’s notebooks 6016 cagaf cagaf NOUN m.dh gender=feminine|number=Sing 0 ROOT _ FERRANDI=YES|FFORM=_|DEFINITION="(-gfo, m.dh) 1. Cagta geela. ld cuguf. 2. qalab beerta lagu qodo oo culus." |SYNONYM="7976=cuguf" |TRANSLATION="it=1. piede del cammello. 2. pesante zappa tradizionale tutta di legno, dal manico corto.|en=1. foot of the camel. 2. heavy traditional hoe made entirely of wood, with a short handle." Somali Corpus (SC) DB Lexicon (SC) manual construction Integration Extractor Converter CoNNL-U OntoLex UFN Lexicon Ugo Ferrandi’s Notebooks (UFN) Università di Napoli L’Orientale, 13 giugno 2023 ❖The two resources (Ugo Ferrandi Notebook Lexicon & Somali Corpus) are kept physically separated but intimately connected, complementing each other. ❖LE in the Ferrandi resource, when possible, will be linked to their corresponding entries in the Somali corpus lexicon. ❖This allows the synchronic corpus-related Somali Lexicon to shedding light on the over time Somali linguistic dynamics. REPRESENTING THE ONTOLOGY: SIMPLE MODEL ❖The ontology architecture is influenced by the SIMPLE model (Lenci et al., 2000), inspired by Pustejosky's generative lexicon theory (Pustejosky, 1995) ❖Concepts are interconnect in hierarchic way within a vast network of relationships which are interpretation of the four Aristotelian causes of the Qualia structure (Moravcsik, 1995) ❖The semantic complexity of a term is “represented” orthogonally by answering questions concerning properties of the term: Università di Napoli L’Orientale, 13 giugno 2023 Formal = What is X? Agentive = How was X created? Costitutive = How is X composted? Telic = What is the function of X? QUALIA Formal Role Agentive Role Telic Role Constitutive Role ARTIFACT FERRANDI’S NOTEBOOK ARTIFACT TERMINOLOGY Università di Napoli L’Orientale, 13 giugno 2023 CLASSES N. TERMS AGRICULTURAL TOOL 2 SHEPHERDING TOOL 4 TRADE TOOL 4 FURNITURE 13 COOKING TOOL 5 RELIGIOUS ARTIFACT 2 FUNERAL ARTIFACT 2 WEAPON 10 PERSONAL CARE TOOL 2 WEAVING TOOL 1 MUSICAL INSTRUMENT 9 CONTAINER 23 GARMENT 16 MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS “Les Çomalis ne possèdent aucun instrument de musique. Quand ils dansent, ils s’accompagnent de la voix et des mains, en mesure, et se portent en avant, par soubresauts, les jarrets tendus” (Révoil, 1882) Ferrandi provides us with a meticulous documentation of the instruments used by the tribes in the village of Lugh, significantly contributing to anthropological and ethnomusicological research. As already highlighted by Giannattasio (1988), the foundational principles of Somali organology diverge from those of the Western tradition. ONTOLOGY: CONCEPTUALISATION OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS Somali musical instruments classification according to Giannattasio (1988) ONTOLOGY: CONCEPTUALISATION OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS Università di Napoli L’Orientale, 13 giugno 2023 Musical instrument conceptualisation using PROTÉGÉ ❖User-friendly tool for the creation and maintenance of ontologies. ❖The Ferrandi’s ontology creation is still at an early stage. ❖Somali musical instruments have already been formalized with different and specific classes. ❖We can classify and distinguish TUMID and YEERIN instruments. LINGUISTIC AND CONCEPTUAL REPRESENTATION - AIAT Università di Napoli L’Orientale, 13 giugno 2023 :aiat_entry a ontolex:Word ; lexinfo:partOfSpeech lexinfo:noun ; ontolex:canonicalForm [ ontolex:written Rep “aiat”@som ] ; ontolex:sense :aiat_s1 ; rdfs:seeAlso xayaad_entry . :aiat_s1 a ontolex:LexicalSense ; skos:definition “Strumento musicale di forma parallelepipedale composto da due tavolette di legno battute insieme in cadenza per produrre il suono. E' usato durante le feste a cui partecipa il Gubahin in maniera attiva con gli schiavi, organizzando balli (come lo xayaad) e canti accompagnati dai suonatori che compongono le orchestre. (Ferrandi 1903: 287)”@it ; ontolex:reference onto:AIAT . :xayaad_entry a ontolex:Word ; lexinfo:partOfSpeech lexinfo:noun ; lexinfo:gender lexinfo:masculine ; ontolex:canonicalForm :xayaad_cf ; lexinfo:geographicalVariant [ ontolex:lexicalForm [ ontolex:writtenRep “xayaat”@som ]]; ontolex:sense :xayaad_s1 , ontolex:sense :xayaad_s2 . :xayaad_cf a ontolex:Form ; ontolex:writtenRep “xayaad”@som . :xayaad_s1 a ontolex:LexicalSense, lemond:LexicalpSense ; skos:definition “Nooc ka mid ah ciyaaraha saarka oo leh jiib, jaan iyo sacab, waxaana cayaar ammaanta diinta Islaamka ku dhisan oo ay dheelaan beeraleyda reer Dhoobey iyo Ugaarsatadaba. Dheeshaa sida Booranaha waxaa lagu daaweeyaa cudurro.”@som , “special kind of dance; dance tune, dance-song sing the tune for a dance; live it up, be lively.”@eng ; :xayaad_s2 a ontolex:LexicalSense, lemond:LexicalpSense ; skos:definition “Magac qof oo dheddiga loo bixiyo.”@som , “proper name for a female person.”@eng ;