Enriching a Terminological Database with a Set of Idiomatic Expressions

The research described here is aimed at enriching the terminological database Mariterm with a set of idiomatic expressions related to the nautical field. The database is available at the Institute for Computational Linguistics (ILC) of the National Research Council (CNR) in Pisa (Italy), and contains semantic information for around 3500 Italian terms belonging to the maritime domain. Each Italian term is linked to other terms by means of semantic "internal relations" and is also connected to the equivalent synonyms in English. We relate on the methodology designed to expand the database, increase the lexical resource with explanations on the origins of the most common expressions, and study the similarities and differences in meaning and usage of some idiomatic expressions in the two languages. The possibility of using this linguistic resource also for didactic purposes in public and private schools is considered.