---
title: "A Detailed, Accurate, Extensive, Available English Lexical"
description: "The paper presents DANTE (Database of Analysed Texts of English), a hand-built lexical database… 11 references, cited by 1 paper here."
authors: ["Adam Kilgarriff"]
year: 2010
venue: "Proceedings of the NAACL HLT 2010 Demonstration Session"
source: "https://aclanthology.org/N10-2006/"
licence: "CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 (ACL Anthology, before 2016)"
licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/kilgarriff-2010-detailed-accurate-extensive-available-english/"
---
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# A Detailed, Accurate, Extensive, Available English Lexical Database

**Authors:** [Adam Kilgarriff](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/adam-kilgarriff/) · **Year:** 2010 · **Venue:** [Proceedings of the NAACL HLT 2010 Demonstration Session](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/naacl/) ([NAACL 2010](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/naacl/2010/)) · **Publisher:** [Association for Computational Linguistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/association-for-computational-linguistics/) · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 (ACL Anthology, before 2016)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/)

**Links:** [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/N10-2006/) · [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/N10-2006.pdf) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W6915473)

**Citations:** 7 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14) · 1 in our library, of the 149,439 papers whose bibliographies we read

## Summary
The paper presents DANTE (Database of Analysed Texts of English), a hand-built lexical database covering the 50,000 most frequent English words. The author argues that earlier lexicons used in NLP each had gaps. Publisher dictionaries predated corpora, were inconsistent and carried restrictive licences. COMLEX and XTAG describe only syntax, and WordNet only semantics.

DANTE was produced as the source-language analysis stage of a New English Irish Dictionary. The work began with a year of planning and then a 30-month compilation phase by fifteen experienced lexicographers. They followed a strict style guide and XML schema and worked from a large corpus queried through the Sketch Engine. Each entry records senses, subsenses, grammatical patterns, collocations, support verbs and prepositions, variant forms, multiword chunks and pragmatic notes. Every point is backed by unedited corpus sentences.

The resource was due for completion in Summer 2010. It would be free for NLP research, under a licence that lets enhanced versions be shared through the owner. A companion sense-assignment tool, DANTE disambiguation, was also announced. The paper matters because it offers a single, consistent, corpus-grounded account of English words that combines syntax, semantics and phraseology.

## Key points
- Scale and resourcing: 50,000 headwords, 15 lexicographers, a 12-month planning phase plus a 30-month main phase, and a 2.3 MEuro contract won by Lexicography MasterClass in 2007. The work was funded by Foras na Gaeilge.
- Planning tools:
  - 100 model entries were written to cover the main phenomena.
  - Each headword was classified into one of 18 type/complexity categories.
  - Template entries were built for 68 lexical sets.
  - Fixed inventories were defined: 40 verb patterns, 18 noun patterns and 18 adjective patterns, all to be recorded per sense.
- Corpus: the 250m-word New Corpus for Ireland (NCI) was judged too small and dated. Its Irish English portion was merged with UKWaC and recent American newspaper text, then POS-tagged with TreeTagger and loaded into the Sketch Engine.
- Tooling:
  - Word sketches used grammatical relations defined to match the lexicographers' patterns exactly, with the same names.
  - GDEX ranked candidate example sentences.
  - One-click copying moved sentences into the entry.
  - A restrictive 72-element DTD was used, and entries that failed validation could not be submitted.
- Licensing: the database is free for research use. Licensees cannot redistribute it themselves, but the owner promises to pass quality-checked enhanced versions on to other groups and to merge enhancements. Commercial rights stay with the owner.

## Interesting ideas
- Define the corpus tool's grammatical relations to mirror, name for name, the patterns the annotators must record, so automatic output becomes a direct draft of the target annotation.
- Before scaling up, write a small set of model entries chosen to cover every major phenomenon, and use it as both specification and training reference.
- Give words in the same lexical set (e.g., a semantic class) a shared template that is pre-filled automatically, which saves effort and enforces consistency.
- Combine a maximally restrictive schema, menu-based closed values and routine queries for suspicious configurations, such as a multi-sense word with no examples at all, to catch errors before approval.
- Turn each lexicon field into a test that either matches or fails on a word occurrence, and assign senses by which patterns fit, as DANTE disambiguation plans.

## For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

- **I1** (frames): Name UD-derived argument patterns exactly as the VerbNet/frame syntactic slots, so a parse can be read straight off as a candidate frame with no translation layer.
- **I2** (learn): Keep a hand-checked set of about a hundred sentences spanning all target constructions as a fixed regression and negative-control suite for every parser or frame change.
- **I3** (world): Attach default property/state templates to WordNet or verb-class groups, so new entities inherit structured slots instead of being described ad hoc.
- **I4** (learn): Run invariant checks over silver data, such as impossible relation combinations or frames missing required roles, and quarantine violators before they enter training.
- **I5** (frames): Choose a verb sense by checking its recorded patterns, collocates and support prepositions against the UD tree, which yields a fully explainable sense decision.

*Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.*

## Institutions

- [Lexical Computing](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/companies/lexical-computing/) — Company, Brighton, United Kingdom · 5 works · 514 citations

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🧭 Topics (1): [English](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/english/) · 2,379 works

## Cite

Cite as: Adam Kilgarriff. 2010. A Detailed, Accurate, Extensive, Available English Lexical Database. Proceedings of the NAACL HLT 2010 Demonstration Session.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@inproceedings{kilgarriff2010detailed,
  title = {{A Detailed, Accurate, Extensive, Available English Lexical Database}},
  author = {Adam Kilgarriff},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the NAACL HLT 2010 Demonstration Session},
  year = {2010},
  url = {https://aclanthology.org/N10-2006/}
}
```

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## References

11 references, 2 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

1. Sue Atkins and Valerie Grundy. 2006. Lexicographic profiling: an aid to consistency in dictionary entry design. In Proc. Euralex, Torino. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Sue+Atkins+and+Valerie+Grundy%2E+2006%2E+Lexicographic+profiling%3A+an+aid+to+consistency+in+dictionary+entry+design%2E+In+Proc%2E+Euralex%2C+Torino%2E)
2. Sue Atkins and Michael Rundell. 2008. Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography. OUP, Oxford. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Sue+Atkins+and+Michael+Rundell%2E+2008%2E+Oxford+Guide+to+Practical+Lexicography%2E+OUP%2C+Oxford%2E)
3. Bran Boguraev and Ted Briscoe, editors. 1989. Computational lexicography for natural language processing. Longman, London. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Bran+Boguraev+and+Ted+Briscoe%2C+editors%2E+1989%2E+Computational+lexicography+for+natural+language+processing%2E+Longman%2C+London%2E)
4. Christy Doran, Dania Egedi, Beth Ann Hockey, B. Srinivas, and Martin Zaidel. 1994. [Xtag system: a wide coverage grammar for english](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/doran-1994-xtag-system-wide-coverage-grammar/). In Proc. COLING, pages 922–928. [↗](https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.cmp-lg/9410010)
5. Christiane Fellbaum, editor. 1998. WordNet, an electronic lexical database. MIT Press. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Christiane+Fellbaum%2C+editor%2E+1998%2E+WordNet%2C+an+electronic+lexical+database%2E+MIT+Press%2E)
6. Adriano Ferraresi, Eros Zanchetta, Marco Baroni, and Silvia Bernardini. 2008. Introducing and evaluating UKWaC, a very large web-derived corpus of English. In ProcẆAC4, LREC, Marrakesh. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Adriano+Ferraresi%2C+Eros+Zanchetta%2C+Marco+Baroni%2C+and+Silvia+Bernardini%2E+2008%2E+Introducing+and+evaluating+UKWaC%2C+a+very+large+web%2Dderived+corpus+of+English%2E+In+ProcW%CC%87AC4%2C+LREC%2C+Marrakesh%2E)
7. Adam Kilgarriff, Milos Husak, Katy McAdam, Michael Rundell, and Pavel Rychly. 2008. [Gdex: Automatically finding good dictionary examples in a corpus](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/kilgarriff-2008-gdex-examples/). In Proc. Euralex, Barcelona.
8. Adam Kilgarriff. 1998. Business models for dictioanries and NLP. Int Jnl Lexicography, 13(2):107–118. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Adam+Kilgarriff%2E+1998%2E+Business+models+for+dictioanries+and+NLP%2E+Int+Jnl+Lexicography%2C+13%282%29%3A107%E2%80%93118%2E)
9. Adam Kilgarriff. 2006. Efficient corpus development for lexicography: building the new corpus for ireland. Language Resources and Evaluation Journal. [↗](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10579-006-9011-7)
10. Catherine Macleod, Ralph Grishman, and Adam Meyers. 1994. The comlex syntax project: the first year. In ProcḢuman Language Technology workshop, pages 8–12. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Catherine+Macleod%2C+Ralph+Grishman%2C+and+Adam+Meyers%2E+1994%2E+The+comlex+syntax+project%3A+the+first+year%2E+In+ProcH%CC%87uman+Language+Technology+workshop%2C+pages+8%E2%80%9312%2E)
11. Yorick Wilks, Brian Slator, and Louise Guthrie. 1996. Electric words: dictionaries, computers, and meanings. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Yorick+Wilks%2C+Brian+Slator%2C+and+Louise+Guthrie%2E+1996%2E+Electric+words%3A+dictionaries%2C+computers%2C+and+meanings%2E+MIT+Press%2C+Cambridge%2C+MA%2C+USA%2E)

*Updated 1 November 2026*