A Search Engine for the Large Electronic Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language (VESUM)

Abstract

This paper presents a new search engine developed for the Large Electronic Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language (also known as VESUM)–a project aiming at generating a morphological dictionary for the Ukrainian language, which is also used in a Ukrainian POS-tagger. The aim of the current project is to set up a more user-friendly interface with broader search options, which at the same time provides more information contained in the Dictionary database. The newly developed search functionality for the Ukrainian Dictionary is built upon the search engine created for the Belarusian grammar database and utilizes grammar tags defined in the VESUM database. It enables the usage of wildcards in search queries and allows a user to set up search grammars. The developed system provides more extensive search options and a way of displaying lemma information that is more structured and transparent both for professionals and non-linguists. It is well-suited for the addition of new tags and search parameters (including, but not limited to, conjugation classes and variations in the orthography of certain words) which will be featured in future versions of the software.