---
title: "ODL: an Object Description Language for Lexical Information"
description: "The paper presents a full ODL description of Maltese lexical values and shows how labels can reconcile it with the existing… 16 references."
authors: ["Michael Rosner"]
year: 2008
venue: "Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'08)"
source: "https://aclanthology.org/L08-1347/"
licence: "CC BY-NC 4.0 (ELRA, LREC proceedings)"
licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/rosner-2008-odl-object-description-language-lexical/"
---
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# ODL: an Object Description Language for Lexical Information

**Authors:** [Michael Rosner](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/michael-rosner/) · **Year:** 2008 · **Venue:** [Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'08)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/lrec/) ([LREC 2008](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/lrec/2008/)) · **Publisher:** [European Language Resources Association (ELRA)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/european-language-resources-association-elra/) · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC 4.0 (ELRA, LREC proceedings)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)

**Links:** [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/L08-1347/) · [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/L08-1347.pdf) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W206541179)

**Citations:** 0 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14)

## Summary
The paper tackles the cost and error-proneness of hand-building a large computational lexicon for Maltese, a language with very rich morphology. The work belongs to MLRS (Maltese Language Resource Server), a national project to build a corpus and lexicon. Its lexicon, MaltiLex, is a full-form SQL database that links lexical forms to flat attribute-value sets, stored as fixed-length bit-fields so that boolean searches run quickly. Lexicographers edit entries through LEd, an internet client.

The main contribution is ODL, a language-independent declarative language. In ODL one declares value types (enumerations), entry classes with permitted values and inheritance, and labels. These declarations decide which fields LEd shows and which values an entry may take. Linguists therefore type less and the system fills in or blocks the rest. The paper presents a full ODL description of Maltese lexical values and shows how labels can reconcile it with the existing Maltese tagset, which is still work in progress. The value of the approach is that lexical specifications become formal and checkable, and the same declarations drive storage, validation and interface.

## Key points
- MaltiLex was first conceived in 1998 and is being extended within MLRS. To avoid committing to one theory of Maltese morphology, it is a full-form lexicon. It is designed for possibly several million entries.
- Lexical information is modelled as a relation from forms to attribute→atomic-value functions (e.g. *klieb* → cat=N, num=plur). Recursive feature structures, as in HPSG, LFG or TFS, are deliberately left to a later morpho-syntactic layer.
- ODL's core declaration kinds are Enumeration, Class and Rule. Classes support multiple inheritance, with conflicts resolved by the order of superclasses. Labels such as NNSM give named presets for tagset tags.
- ODL has three special values:
  - *unspecified*: the item is compatible with any value, as with the gender of *intelliġenti*.
  - *undefined*: the attribute does not apply, as with gender on Maltese plural nouns.
  - *none*: an optional element such as a clitic is absent.
- The Maltese description uses 11 categories, including pseudo_predicate and modifier, and attributes for type, person, number, gender and attachment. Labels map this system onto the tagset of Gatt et al. (2003). Planned next steps are tagger training and an HPSG grammar building on Müller (2007).

## Interesting ideas
- Separating "ambiguous", "not applicable" and "optional part missing" into three distinct values stops a missing feature from being misread.
- A single declarative schema of which attributes each category allows, and which values they take, serves at once as storage layout, input form and validity check. For example, choosing plural switches gender off.
- Tagset tags are defined as named shorthands over a richer class, not as primitives, which makes tag-to-feature mapping explicit and checkable.
- Within a disjunction, the first listed value acts as the default when a new entry is created, so the common case costs no input yet stays editable.
- Flat atomic features are kept in a fast, bit-packed store for boolean lookup, and recursive structures are built only in a later layer.

## For Mova

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

- **I1** (tokens): Morphology in crate en could mark features like Gender on *their* as underspecified rather than empty, so later stages know agreement checks there are vacuous rather than failed.
- **I2** (learn): Tagger and parser outputs, including silver data, could be validated against such a per-UPOS feature schema, so impossible combinations like a VERB carrying Case act as cheap negative controls.
- **I3** (tree): UD dialect conversion could declare each source tag (PTB, treebank-specific) as a label over a UD feature class, making the conversion table inspectable and explainable.
- **I4** (world): Compiled lexical knowledge (verb classes, measures) could store an ordered set of allowed values whose head is the default reading, keeping the fallback explicit rather than hidden in code.
- **I5** (world): The knowledge layer could index entity and lexical properties as flat bit-fields for quick filtering, while assembling nested frame structures only at the frame/world stage.

*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

- [University of Malta](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-malta/) — University, Msida, Malta · 16 works · 775 citations

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## Cite

Cite as: Michael Rosner. 2008. ODL: an Object Description Language for Lexical Information. Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'08).

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

```bibtex
@inproceedings{rosner2008odl,
  title = {{ODL: an Object Description Language for Lexical Information}},
  author = {Michael Rosner},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'08)},
  year = {2008},
  doi = {10.63317/42iw523qm7qh},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.63317/42iw523qm7qh}
}
```

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16 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

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*Updated 24 October 2026*