Converting a Toolbox lexical database to LKB format
Contents
Summary
Note: Update in progress as of October / November 2012. Hannes Hirzel
The LKB system (Linguistic Knowledge Builder) is a grammar and lexicon development environment for unification-based linguistic formalisms. LKB is focused on the use of HPSG. This page contains a description and the program to convert a lexicon database made with Toolbox to lexicon format needed by LKB. The scripts were developed by Hannes Hirzel.
A presentation in Trondheim, 2005 (File:Toolbox-LKB-Link-slides - version 4.pdf) shows how this was applied to a lexicon file of the Ga language edited by Mary E. Kropp Dakubu.
The scripting language used is called 'Consistent changes' and built into the Toolbox program. You may run the program from within Toolbox. To do so make the lexicon file the active windows and then choose the
- 'File' menu,
- 'Export'
- 'TBox-LKB-Step1'.
This runs all processing steps. The result is a lexicon file in LKB format.
A working portable setup is available from the author on request, see download section on this page. The setup might need some adaptation for your needs. All files to do so are text files which you may change, see license section.
Download
The following folder File:Toolbox Project Ga.zip contains the standard files produced by the utility program 'Toolbox New Project Package 1.5.8 from http://www'.sil.org/computing/toolbox/downloads.htm .
The file 'Dictionary.txt' has been replaced
by the Ga lexicon
created by Mary Ester Dakubu (MED), University of Ghana.
This folder has been posted to this web site [www.typecraft.org] by permission.
How to start Toolbox
The folder 'Settings' contains the Toolbox exe file. Double click on it to start it.
How to create the LKB tdl file
To run the conversion do the following steps
- Make the dictionary window the 'active window' by clicking on the title bar
- Choose menu 'File' / 'Export'
- Select 'TBox-LKB Step1'
- Click 'OK'.
- A new file 'LKBlexicon.tdl' is created.
Implementation of the conversion
There is a folder 'Tbox2LKB-conv-scripts' which has a copy of the the cct files of the folder 2005-05-31Ga-for-LKB-Uni-Trondheim-11a
These cct files are used to convert the Ga lexicon which is in SFM (Toolbox format) to the format LKB (Linguistic Knowledge Builder) needs.
License
The presentation and this wiki page are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. The script code (program code) is under the MIT license.
Contact for dictionary file: medakubu@gmail.com