Rafael Marín | Université de Lille (original) (raw)

Books by Rafael Marín

Pocos ámbitos de la gramática del español alcanzan tal grado de complejidad. Por motivos de diver... more Pocos ámbitos de la gramática del español alcanzan tal grado de complejidad. Por motivos de diversa índole, los denominados predicados psicológicos componen un rompecabezas cuya resolución supone un auténtico desafío gramatical. A ello contribuye principalmente su sorprendente variabilidad, tanto en el fondo como en la forma. Así, por lo que respecta a los verbos, en unos casos es el sujeto el que experimenta una emoción (temer); en otros, lo es el objeto (asustar). En lenguas como el español, los de experimentante objeto, además, pueden mostrarse bajo las más diversas formas; entre otras, la de acusativo (lo asustan), dativo (le asustan) o pronominal (se asusta), sin que sepamos aún muy bien si de alguna de esas variantes derivan las demás.
Con el ambicioso objetivo de reducir el número de piezas que aún no encajan –o no del todo– en este puzle, el presente volumen incluye, además de un capítulo introductorio sobre el estado de la cuestión, siete artículos de otros tantos especialistas que examinan estos predicados –no solo los verbos, sino también adjetivos y nombres– desde diferentes perspectivas, tanto teóricas como empíricas.

This detailed, perceptive addition to the linguistics literature analyzes the semantic components... more This detailed, perceptive addition to the linguistics literature analyzes the semantic components of event predicates, exploring their fine-grained elements as well as their agency in linguistic processing. The papers go beyond pure semantics to consider their varying influences of event predicates on argument structure, aspect, scalarity, and event structure.

The volume shows how advances in the linguistic theory of event predicates, which have spawned Davidsonian and neo-Davidsonian notions of event arguments, in addition to ‘event structure’ frameworks and mereological models for the eventuality domain, have sidelined research on specific sets of entailments that support a typology of event predicates. Addressing this imbalance in the literature, the work also presents evidence indicating a more complex role for scalar structures than currently assumed. It will enrich the work of semanticists, psycholinguists, and syntacticians with a decompositional approach to verb phrase structure.

Comment se construit la polysémie des noms dérivés de verbes ou d'adjectifs (les "nominalisations... more Comment se construit la polysémie des noms dérivés de verbes ou d'adjectifs (les "nominalisations") ? Découle-t-elle de règles de formation ? Quels sens concerne-t-elle ? Les noms dérivés de verbes présentant des valeurs aspectuelles en héritent-ils ? Tels sont les axes majeurs de questionnement qu’abordent les sémanticiens et morphologues contributeurs de ce volume.
Si les nominalisations occupent une place importante dans l’analyse linguistique moderne, du fait des problèmes qu’elles posent à celle-ci, les études menées jusqu’à présent, souvent sur l’anglais, ont tendu à privilégier la dimension syntaxique de ces produits lexicaux de la morphologie dérivationnelle. En élargissant l’approche à la sémantique, notamment sous l’angle de la polysémie et des valeurs aspectuelles des noms considérés, les auteurs, qui comptent parmi les meilleurs spécialistes de la question pour le domaine français, renouvellent en profondeur l’approche de ce phénomène langagier complexe.

En este trabajo se analiza la distinción entre ser y estar en español; en particular, los diferen... more En este trabajo se analiza la distinción entre ser y estar en español; en particular, los diferentes usos, valores, y significados de estos dos verbos. Para ello, se estudian las restricciones aspectuales que imponen sobre sus posibles complementos, ya sean éstos adjetivos, participios, sintagmas preposicionales, adverbios, sustantivos o gerundios. Asimismo, se ofrece un análisis comparativo con otros dominios sintácticos, como los que constituyen las construcciones absolutas, los elementos predicativos o los verbos pseudocopulativos, sensibles a restricciones aspectuales similares.
En el libro se repasan, además, los logros obtenidos en el análisis de ser y estar en los últimos años. Por todo ello y por la clara intención divulgativa con que ha sido redactado puede ser de utilidad a un público amplio: profesores de enseñanza media, estudiantes universitarios de primer ciclo, profesores y estudiantes de español como lengua extranjera y, en general, a cualquier persona interesada en la gramática del español.

Papers by Rafael Marín

Proceedings of the 39th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL), 2024

It is commonly assumed that the requirement for an adjectival passive to be possible is a verb wi... more It is commonly assumed that the requirement for an adjectival passive to be possible is a verb with a stative component in its event structure. This allows both telic and stative verbs to be part of these constructions, but leaves (atelic and dynamic) activities out. Crucially, this paper identifies a group of verbs, those of the type of perseguir 'to chase', which, despite encoding activities (and hence apparently lacking a stative component), can enter adjectival passives with estar in Spanish, even though these adjectival passives have a progressive reading. A formal syntactic analysis for the availability of these constructions is provided which preserves the above-mentioned restriction (namely, that only verbs including a stative layer are allowed in adjectival passives) and, in addition, accounts for their progressive denotation.

Glossa, 2024

This study focuses on a group of so-called extent verbs (Gawron 2009) in Spanish (cf. rodear 'sur... more This study focuses on a group of so-called extent verbs (Gawron 2009) in Spanish (cf. rodear 'surround', cubrir 'cover', or bordear 'border') that show an alternation between an eventive and a stative reading, related to an argument structure alternation: they are eventive with Initiator subjects (i.e., Agents or Causers), but stative with non-Initiator subjects. As we demonstrate, the eventive version has a composite denotation, including a change of state and a subsequent (target) state (Kratzer 2000). The stative version, in turn, describes a state that corresponds to the target state included in the denotation of the eventive version. We offer a non-derivational account of this alternation following Ramchand's (2018) neo-constructionist approach to argument/event structure. Based on a series of diagnostics, we claim that extent verbs can be associated with two different structural configurations that are clearly connected: one which lacks the subeventive projections that introduce causativity (Init) and eventivity (Proc), expressing a non-causative state (State) that extends along a delimited path (Path + Place); and one which, in addition to this stative component, also conveys causation and eventivity (Init + Proc), giving rise to a telic change of state. In both cases, the external argument is licensed by a dedicated projection (Evt), but it is configurationally interpreted, in the former case, as the entity that ensures that the state holds and, in the latter, as an Initiator. The proposal has theoretical implications regarding (non-)agentivity, causativity, the locus of the external argument, and the availability of verbal and adjectival passives.

The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, Morphosyntax, and Semantics, 2024

Proceedings of the British Academy, 2023

Education is changing, and experiences of pedagogic innovation are increasingly in demand in the ... more Education is changing, and experiences of pedagogic innovation are increasingly in demand in the market. At the same time, it is however not always easy to find ways to transfer higher academic knowledge into engaging materials that can be effectively used by the teachers and pupils in primary and secondary education, particularly materials that speak a language familiar to younger pupils. In this chapter, we present an attempt to fill that gap by means of a collection of comic books in paper and digital formats devoted to scientific topics. The initiative, funded by the Catalan Foundation for Research and Innovation, is in its initial stages, and dedicates its first series to linguistics, particularly to those topics where this field interacts with other sciences. Each comic book presents a concrete topic in the form of a fiction story based on research, combined with documentation content and learning activities to be developed in the classroom. Through those materials, pupils will get to know the state of the art in many of the topics the collection presents, and this will foster vocations and raise general interest for our field.

Linguistics, 2023

The present study aims to throw light on the behavior of the Spanish copulas ser and estar in loc... more The present study aims to throw light on the behavior of the Spanish copulas ser and estar in locative sentences, beyond their classical distinction in terms of Individual-Level (IL) versus Stage-Level (SL) predicates. The behavior of the Spanish copulas in locative contexts constitutes an oddity that we aim to probe here: events (concierto 'concert'), despite their clear spatial and temporal anchorage, combine with ser (El concierto es en París 'The concert is in Paris'), which is the copula typically associated with IL or permanent predicates. To do so, we discuss the behavior of copulas as locative verbs in a broader empirical context, where not just events and individuals are considered, but also other types of nominals, such as qualities and states. We argue that ser emerges with events because time and place constituents combine directly with events, without the intermediation of extra predicational structure. When carrying a marked value, that extra predicational structure triggers the insertion of estar; when there is no predication structure (such as with events) and when the predication structure is unmarked (IL predicates), ser appears as the default copula.

Dative constructions in Romance and beyond, 2020

This article discusses the question of how the meaning contribution of a dative is obtained. Desp... more This article discusses the question of how the meaning contribution of a dative is obtained. Despite the different formal instantiations that a dative can take, its semantics is typically very stable cross-linguistically. In particular, datives typically express goals of motion and experiencers; importantly, in experiencer contexts they are associated with a stative reading of the predicate, which in principle clashes with the goal semantics. In this chapter we argue that datives are semantically defined as initial boundaries, but specifically, when interpreted as experiencers, they are introduced by a prepositional layer that prevents the boundary semantics from extending to the whole predicate.

Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2018. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ 32, Utrecht., 2021

The present study investigates the development of the expression of the locative paradigm in the ... more The present study investigates the development of the expression of the locative paradigm in the L2 Spanish of Italian-speaking learners. We investigate (i) whether the developmental stages proposed for English-speaking learners (VanPatten 1987; Perpiñán, Marín & Moreno Villamar 2020) hold for Italian-speaking learners; and (ii) whether Italian, a language that partially overlaps with the distribution of the Spanish copulas has a facilitative role in the process. 33 Italian-speaking learners of Spanish and 21 monolingual Spanish speakers completed a short proficiency test, an acceptability judgement task, and a picture matching task targeting these constructions. Results indicate that unlike what VanPatten (1987, 2010) has proposed for English-speaking learners of Spanish, Italian speakers do not present a delay in the acquisition of estar, but instead, it is overproduced in locative contexts from very early on. We argue that this overproduction of estar is due to the readily available mapping of 'temporal boundedness' with estar in the grammar of these L2 learners, whereas the presence of the feature 'dynamicity', even though it is relevant in the distribution of copulas in Italian, comes later in L2 development.

SHS Web of Conferences 138(3):07001, 2022

Cet article s'intéresse à l'héritage des propriétés sémantiques entre catégories, en s'appuyant s... more Cet article s'intéresse à l'héritage des propriétés sémantiques entre catégories, en s'appuyant sur l'étude des noms en-ance, des verbes et des adjectifs en-ant apparentés. Notre hypothèse, nommée Hypothèse du Bornage Étendu, est une version élargie de l'Hypothèse du Bornage (Jackendoff, 1991), et prédit une corrélation entre les propriétés massif/comptable des Nance, la (a)télicité des verbes associés et l'échelle ouverte/fermée des adjectifs en-ant apparentés. Notre travail s'appuie sur les données recueillies dans la base de données AdVeNance, qui comprend 112 noms français en-ance (Nance) (p.ex. résistance), extraits de Lexique3 (New et al. 2001), et leurs verbes et/ou adjectifs associés. Nous décrivons la procédure que nous avons suivie pour extraire les données pertinentes de Lexique3, les tests que nous avons utilisés pour apparier les Nance avec leurs bases, ainsi que nos résultats vis-à-vis de l'Hypothèse du Bornage Étendu.

Borealis, 2022

The study of states has traditionally suffered from a problem: until recently we lacked tests ade... more The study of states has traditionally suffered from a problem: until recently we lacked tests adequate enough to identify states, since most of these tests were tests that states failed, so this aspectual class could only be defined negatively. With the purpose of offering a useful tool to interested researchers, this article compiles more than twenty diagnoses on states. Along with the more classic (negative) diagnoses (developed in the traditions of Vendler-Dowty and Davidson), a good number of more recent diagnoses are included that already allow to positively characterize states.

Isogloss, 2022

This paper addresses Spanish adjectival passives with estar showing a progressive reading. In the... more This paper addresses Spanish adjectival passives with estar showing a progressive reading. In the previous literature, it has been acknowledged that the participles of verbs encoding non-dynamic events, such as vigilar 'guard', give rise to a progressive reading when embedded in adjectival passives. Yet, we have identified another group of verbs, those of the type of perseguir 'chase', which denote dynamic atelic events (i.e., activities) and whose participles are also attested in estar-passives with a progressive denotation. This is a very significant finding, since it is commonly assumed that only participles of verbs including a stative component in their event structure (i.e., telic or stative verbs) can be part of adjectival passives. After comparing the behaviour of these two types of verbs, we propose that they share a relational layer that in the case of vigilar-verbs defines an event as non-dynamic and in the case of perseguir-verbs defines a motion event as

LDK 2021, 2021

The paper presents a syntactico-semantic lexicon of over a thousand French verbs. It has been cre... more The paper presents a syntactico-semantic lexicon of over a thousand French verbs. It has been created by manually adding lexical aspect features to verb frames from TreeLex. We present how the original syntactic resource has been adapted to the current project, our aspect assignment procedure and an overview of the resulting lexical resource.

The paper presents a syntactico-semantic lexicon of over a thousand French verbs. It has been cre... more The paper presents a syntactico-semantic lexicon of over a thousand French verbs. It has been created by manually adding lexical aspect to verb frames gathered in TreeLex (Kupśc and Abeille, 2008). We present how the original syntactic resource has been adapted to the current project, our aspect assignment procedure and an overview of the resulting database.

The aspectual properties of evaluative adjectives (EAs), such as brave and cruel, have been the o... more The aspectual properties of evaluative adjectives (EAs), such as brave and cruel, have been the object of a vivid debate, as they pattern with individual-level predicates (ILP) with respect to the interpretation of bare subjects and their inability to function as depictive adjuncts but, like stage-level predicates, they can have an episodic reading. In addition to this, among adjectives they exhibit exceptional aspectual properties, such as taking the progressive. In this paper, we concentrate on EAs in English and Spanish and argue that they can be characterised as Davidsonian-states, that is, stative event predicates. However, since EAs alternate clearly between two distinct readings–suggesting that the event is not part of the adjective’s lexical entry (unlike D-state verbs such as sleep or wait)–we analyze them as ILPs with the ability to predicate of two sorts of subject: an individual or an event. In the first case they behave like ILPs, in the second they exhibit all the aspe...

Proceedings of the 39th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL), 2024

Glossa, 2024

The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, Morphosyntax, and Semantics, 2024

Proceedings of the British Academy, 2023

Linguistics, 2023

Dative constructions in Romance and beyond, 2020

Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2018. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ 32, Utrecht., 2021

SHS Web of Conferences 138(3):07001, 2022

Borealis, 2022

Isogloss, 2022

LDK 2021, 2021

The paper presents a syntactico-semantic lexicon of over a thousand French verbs. It has been cre... more The paper presents a syntactico-semantic lexicon of over a thousand French verbs. It has been created by manually adding lexical aspect to verb frames gathered in TreeLex (Kupśc and Abeille, 2008). We present how the original syntactic resource has been adapted to the current project, our aspect assignment procedure and an overview of the resulting database.

From the work of (Lees, 1960), through (Chomsky, 1970) and (Grimshaw, 1990), to more recent studi... more From the work of (Lees, 1960), through (Chomsky, 1970) and (Grimshaw, 1990), to more recent studies, nominalizations have occupied a central place in grammatical analysis, with a focus on morphological and syntactic aspects. More recently, researchers have begun to address a specific issue often neglected before, i.e. the semantics of nominalizations, and its implications for Natural Language Processing applications such as electronic ontologies or Information Retrieval. We focus on precisely these issues in the research project NOMAGE (ANR-07-JCJC-0085-01), a young researchers’ project funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR). The present submission outlines this ongoing semantic annotation project. Several previous works on the semantics of deverbal nouns (Haas & Huyghe, to appear), (Haas, Huyghe, & Maŕin, 2008) and (Huyghe & Maŕin, 2007), indicate that nominals inherit certain aspectual properties from their associated verbs. This is particularly clear when comparing t...

Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Resources and Tools for Derivational Morphology (DeriMo 2021), 2021

This article introduces the AdVeNance 1 resource, which includes 112 French nouns ending in-ance ... more This article introduces the AdVeNance 1 resource, which includes 112 French nouns ending in-ance (Nance) (e.g. résistance 'resistance'), extracted from Lexique3 (New et al. 2001), and their related verbs and/or adjectives, and how it enabled us to verify the Extended Boundedness Hypothesis, an enlarged version of the Boundedness Hypothesis (Jackendoff, 1991). We describe the procedure we followed to extract relevant data from Lexique3 and the tests we used to pair Nance with their relevant bases. The correlation between the mass/count properties of Nance, the (a)telicity of the related verbs, and the open/closed scale of the related adjectives is then discussed in detail. Our results show that over 90% of Nance are mass. Mass Nance are mostly related to stative verbs and unbounded adjectives, in line with the Extended Boundedness Hypothesis. As for count Nance, all are related to telic verbs, but a significant number of them are unexpectedly paired with non-degree (vs bounded) adjectives. Therefore, the EBH is only partially confirmed by count Nance. So as to expand AdVeNance, we began to examine nouns in-ence (Nence, e.g. préférence 'preference'). A preliminary analysis of these nouns and their verbal bases reveals that, similarly to Nance, most Nence are mass, and most of mass Nence derive from stative verbs.

Since Belletti & Rizzi (1988), there has been a considerable debate over whether object experienc... more Since Belletti & Rizzi (1988), there has been a considerable debate over whether object experiencer psychological verbs (OEPVs) are able to form verbal passives or not. Some authors (Grimshaw, 1990; Legendre, 1993) agree with Belletti & Rizzi (1988) in considering that OEPVs are unaccusative and, that therefore, they cannot form verbal passives, but only adjectival passives. Other authors (Pesetsky, 1995; Bouchard, 1995) argue that OEPVs are normal transitive verbs and, that therefore, they are able to form verbal passives. Related to this, Landau (2002) distinguishes two types of languages: (i) A languages (e.g. English, Dutch, Finnish), in which (eventive) OEPVs are allowed to form verbal passives, and (ii) B Languages, where OEPVs are only allowed to form adjectival passives. However, as Landau himself acknowledges, most of the tests that are supposed to distinguish verbal and adjectival passives are not very clear-cut.
Interestingly, because of the alternation between the two copulas ser and estar, Spanish provides such a clear-cut diagnostic: (eventive) verbal passives are formed with ser, while adjectival passives are formed with estar (Marín, 2001). In this presentation, I will show that, according to the aforementioned criterion, Spanish OEPVs fall into two groups: (i) those such as asustar ‘frighten’ or molestar ‘annoy’, which are able to form both verbal passives and adjectival passives, and (ii) those such as preocupar ‘worry’ or aburrir ‘bore’, which are only able to form adjectival passives. The existence of these two groups is clearly related to agentivity: asustar-verbs that have an animate subject are agentive, while preocupar-verbs are never agentive. Contrary to the received view, I will demonstrate that these two classes do not differ with respect to aspect: both denote inchoative states (Marín & McNally, 2005; 2011).

The temporal organization of discourse has produced a great deal of works in several languages po... more The temporal organization of discourse has produced a great deal of works in several languages pointing to different aims: from studies where the identification of cues about the planning of linguistic message is treated to studies in which duration models for text-to-speech systems are proposed. This work is a first step towards the description of Catalan vowel duration. Considering the Catalan vowel system, two subsystems can be distinguished according to stress: stressed vowels: /i/, /e/, /E/, /a/, /O/, /o/, /u/, and unstressed vowels /i/, /u/, /@/. The purpose of the present study is to provide data for Catalan vowels in order to achieve a data-oriented description and at the same time a predictive model suitable to be implemented in a TTS system.

Catalan Working Papers in Linguistics, 2000

The aim of this work is to propose a system of F0 labeling using the stress group as the prosodic... more The aim of this work is to propose a system of F0 labeling using the stress group as the prosodic unit that can accurately relate linguistic and acoustic information. To obtain data, a corpus of sentences is given to read to a male speaker and the melodic information contained in the vowels is analyzed. The basic melodic movements —encoded as rise, fall and connection elements— between stress groups in an intonation group are observed in order to develop a set of rules assigning them from text. Results show that by means of the stress group it is possible to model some prosodic facts, such as the effect of sentence length on the height of the first F0 peak in the sentence, as well as to incorporate the syntactic information encoded in the lexical labeling of the stress group.

ICPhS, 2003

From a collection of preliminary experimental data on the quality of some reduced vowels in Russi... more From a collection of preliminary experimental data on the quality of some reduced vowels in Russian and Catalan, we explore the plausibility of the hypothe sis that the output of such phonological processes as vowel reduction is better understood as underspecified, leaving to phonetic implementation the eventual determination of the actual quality of the reduced vowel.

Eurospeech'93, 1993

Phonetic analysis of the speaking styles can involve the study of the differences in the manifest... more Phonetic analysis of the speaking styles can involve the study of the differences in the manifestation of phonetic processes. The aim of this work is to observe and classify low-level reduction processes affecting consonants by means of an acoustic and auditive analysis of a sample of spontaneous speech in Spanish. A continuum of articulatory reduction arises out of the data. Moreover, the acoustic behaviour of the processes helps to establish differences between speaking styles.

Language Design, 2002

The purpose of this work is to describe the appearance and location of typographically unmarked p... more The purpose of this work is to describe the appearance and location of typographically unmarked pauses in any Spanish text to be read. An experiment is designed to derive pause location from natural speech: results show that Intonation Group length constraints guide the appearance of pauses, which are placed depending on syntactic information. Then, a rule-based algorithm is developed to automatically place pauses whose performance is tested by means of qualitative tests. The evaluation shows that the system adequately places pauses in read texts, since it predicts 81% of orthographically unmarked pauses; when pauses associated to punctuation signs are included, the percentage of correct prediction increases to 92%.

Eurospeech'95, 1995

The aim of the paper is to study the displacement of fundamental frequency (F0) peaks phonologica... more The aim of the paper is to study the displacement of fundamental frequency (F0) peaks phonologically associated with lexically stressed syllables in Peninsular Spanish in order to determine some of the factors that can influence this phenomenon. The results show that in paroxyton words in non prepausal position F0 peaks are shifted at least one syllable to the right of the one bearing the lexical stress. An important effect of the strength of different types of syntactic boundaries and also an effect of pauses have been observed.

ICPhS, 1995

This paper presents a preliminary examination of the use of vowel duration and F0 movements as ma... more This paper presents a preliminary examination of the use of vowel duration and F0 movements as markers of different types of syntactic boundaries in Spanish. The study is based on a corpus of sentences extracted from read newspapers articles. Results reveal that certain prosodic cues might convey information about internal syntactic boundaries and that other cues may be related to syntactic cohesion.

Estudios de Lingüística de la Universidad de Alicante (ELUA), 213-226., 1995

In this paper we describe an experimental analysis of vowel duration in Spanish. Some factors tha... more In this paper we describe an experimental analysis of vowel duration in Spanish. Some factors that seem relevant in other studies for characterizing vowel duration were analized here using speech data from two speakers. These factors are: vowel identity, phrase boundaries, lexical stress, open versus closed syllables and effect of the postvocalic consonant. Our results show that Spanish vowels have intrinsic duration and there are some contextual factors, like phrase final boundary, stressed syllables and open syllables, that influence vowel lengthening. For voicing and manner of articulation of postvocalic consonant, significant differences were not found.

The prosodic segmentation is an important research area in text-to-speech conversion: an improvem... more The prosodic segmentation is an important research area in text-to-speech conversion: an improvement in the location of pauses results in an improvement of the global quality of the system as perceived by the listener. The aim of this work is to describe, from an experimental approach, the appearance of the orthographically unmarked pauses in the reading of texts. A new unit, the Categorial Stress Group, is proposed to explain some syntactic factors affecting the location of pauses. From the obtained results, a predictive model of automatic assignation of pauses is proposed.

In this study, a PROLOG-based computational tool designed to assign pauses in Spanish texts is pr... more In this study, a PROLOG-based computational tool designed to assign pauses in Spanish texts is proposed. Our purpose is to develop a prosodic segmentation algorithm suitable to be implemented in a text-to-speech system for Spanish. By means of the analysis of a corpus of read texts in Spanish, prosodic and syntactic factors guiding the location of orthographically unmarked pauses are identified. These factors are used to design a computational model for assigning pauses in unrestricted texts. The performance of the system has been assessed by means of a comparison between its suggested segmentation and natural speech. The obtained results indicate that the system is able to capture empirical facts.

In this paper we describe a knowledge base that has been built using the partially structured kno... more In this paper we describe a knowledge base that has been built using the partially structured knowledge from encyclopaedias. The BDCon (from the Spanish: Base de Datos de Conocimiento) is a general ontology built around an extended Spanish lexicon extracted from two encyclopaedias and a cartographic database. It is composed by a number of interconnected knowledge structures, each of them covering a different aspect of world knowledge. The purpose of the BDCon is to classify the contents of various reference works publishing companies, as well as to support a set of advanced linguistic tools.