# WordNet **Domain:** Lexical Semantics / Computational Linguistics / Knowledge Representation **Doc Type:** Resource Node **Maturity:** Developed **Related:** [[wiki/Lexical Semantics|Lexical Semantics]], [[wiki/Word Sense Disambiguation|Word Sense Disambiguation]], [[wiki/Synset vs Concept Set|Synset vs Concept Set]], [[wiki/Ontology|Ontology]], [[wiki/VersePerfect|VersePerfect]] --- ## Definition **WordNet is a lexical database of English that organizes nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs into sets of cognitive synonyms called synsets and connects them through typed semantic relations.** It was developed at Princeton University under the direction of George A. Miller. WordNet differs from an ordinary alphabetical dictionary. Its central objects are senses and relations: synonymy, broader and narrower types, part-whole structure and other lexical-semantic connections. ## Symbolic Language Engine Context WordNet appears among the source materials used by the [[wiki/Symbolic Language Engine|Symbolic Language Engine]]. The Word Explorer inside [[wiki/VersePerfect|VersePerfect]] exposed numbered senses, part-of-speech categories and relations such as _Type of_ and _Types_, making the taxonomic layer navigable during composition. The project also clarifies WordNet's boundary. A synset represents a classified lexical sense; it does not capture every thematic direction in which actual discourse moves. [[wiki/Synset vs Concept Set|Synset vs Concept Set]] preserves the difference between lexicographic relation and corpus-derived association. ## Reference-Layer Position WordNet, begun at Princeton by George A. Miller in 1985, is the fourth stage of [[wiki/Lexicographic Succession|lexicographic succession]]: after the state academy, the imperial press ([[wiki/Oxford English Dictionary|Oxford English Dictionary]]) and the national dictionary ([[wiki/Noah Webster|Noah Webster]]), an American machine-readable lexicon that supplied a generation of natural-language processing with its sense inventory. [[articles/war with empire/Authorship of the West|Authorship of the West]] cites it as the American stage that preceded the generative model. ## Key Insight **WordNet makes lexical relations computable by attaching them to senses rather than merely to spellings.** ## See Also [[wiki/Lexical Semantics|Lexical Semantics]], [[wiki/Word Sense Disambiguation|Word Sense Disambiguation]], [[wiki/Synset vs Concept Set|Synset vs Concept Set]], [[wiki/Semantic Network|Semantic Network]], [[wiki/Ontology|Ontology]], [[wiki/VersePerfect|VersePerfect]] ## Relationships - **Reference-layer lineage:** [[wiki/Lexicographic Succession|Lexicographic Succession]] · [[wiki/Oxford English Dictionary|Oxford English Dictionary]] · [[wiki/Machine English|Machine English]]. - **Article:** [[articles/war with empire/Authorship of the West|Authorship of the West]]. ## Sources / Provenance - Primary project account: [[projects/Ten Years Building a Symbolic Language Engine|Ten Years Building a Symbolic Language Engine]]. - Princeton WordNet project. - Christiane Fellbaum, ed., *WordNet: An Electronic Lexical Database* (1998). - George A. Miller, [WordNet: A Lexical Database for English](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/219717.219748) (*Communications of the ACM* 38:11, November 1995).