This Word Mean What: Constructing a Singlish Dictionary with ChatGPT

Siew Yeng Chow, Chang-Uk Shin, Francis Bond


Abstract
Despite the magnitude of recent progress in natural language processing and multilingual language modeling research, the vast majority of NLP research is focused on English and other major languages. This is because recent NLP research is mainly data-driven, and there is more data for resource-rich languages. In particular, Large Language Models (LLM) make use of large unlabeled datasets, a resource that many languages do not have. In this project, we built a new, open-sourced dictionary of Singlish, a contact variety that contains features from English and other local languages and is syntactically, phonologically and lexically distinct from Standard English (Tan, 2010). First, a list of Singlish words was extracted from various online sources. Then using an open Chat-GPT LLM API, the description, including the defintion, part of speech, pronunciation and examples was produced. These were then refined through post processing carried out by a native speaker. The dictionary currently has 1,783 entries and is published under the CC-BY-SA license. The project was carried out with the intention of facilitating future Singlish research and other applications as the accumulation and management of language resources will be of great help in promoting research on the language in the future.
Anthology ID:
2024.eurali-1.7
Volume:
Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Resources and Technologies for Indigenous, Endangered and Lesser-resourced Languages in Eurasia (EURALI) @ LREC-COLING 2024
Month:
May
Year:
2024
Address:
Torino, Italia
Editors:
Atul Kr. Ojha, Sina Ahmadi, Silvie Cinková, Theodorus Fransen, Chao-Hong Liu, John P. McCrae
Venues:
EURALI | WS
SIG:
Publisher:
ELRA and ICCL
Note:
Pages:
41–50
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.eurali-1.7
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Siew Yeng Chow, Chang-Uk Shin, and Francis Bond. 2024. This Word Mean What: Constructing a Singlish Dictionary with ChatGPT. In Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Resources and Technologies for Indigenous, Endangered and Lesser-resourced Languages in Eurasia (EURALI) @ LREC-COLING 2024, pages 41–50, Torino, Italia. ELRA and ICCL.
Cite (Informal):
This Word Mean What: Constructing a Singlish Dictionary with ChatGPT (Chow et al., EURALI-WS 2024)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/nschneid-patch-4/2024.eurali-1.7.pdf