Arabic WordNet is a lexical resource for Modern Standard Arabic based on the widely used Princeton WordNet for English (Fellbaum, 1998). Arabic WordNet (AWN) is based on the design and contents of the universally accepted Princeton WordNet (PWN) and will be mappable straightforwardly onto PWN 2.0 and EuroWordNet (EWN), enabling translation on the lexical level to English and dozens of other languages. We have developed and linked the AWN with the Suggested Upper Merged Ontology (SUMO), where concepts are defined with machine interpretable semantics in first order logic (Niles and Pease, 2001). We have greatly extended the ontology and its set of mappings to provide formal terms and definitions for each synset. The end product would be a linguistic resource with a deep formal semantic foundation that is able to capture the richness of Arabic as described in Elkateb (2005). Tools we have developed as part of this effort include a lexicographer's interface modeled on that used for EuroWordNet, with added facilities for Arabic script, following Black and Elkateb's earlier work (2004). In this paper we describe our methodology for building a lexical resource in Arabic and the challenge of Arabic for lexical resources.

This paper introduces a recently initiated project that focuses on building a lexical resource for Modern Standard Arabic based on the widely used Princeton WordNet for English (Fellbaum, 1998). Our aim is to develop a linguistic resource with a deep formal semantic foundation in order to capture the richness of Arabic as described in Elkateb (2005). Arabic WordNet is being constructed following methods developed for EuroWordNet (Vossen, 1998). In addition to the standard wordnet representation of senses, word meanings are also being defined with a machine understandable semantics in first order logic. The basis for this semantics is the Suggested Upper Merged Ontology and its associated domain ontologies (Niles and Pease, 2001). We will greatly extend the ontology and its set of mappings to provide formal terms and definitions for each synset. Tools to be developed as part of this effort include a lexicographer's interface modeled on that used for EuroWordNet, with added facilities for Arabic script, following Black and Elkateb's earlier work (2004).