Simple-Clips ongoing research: more information with less data by implementing inheritance

This paper presents the application of inheritance to the formal taxonomy (is-a) of a semantically rich Lexical Resource (LR) based on the Generative Lexicon theory, SIMPLE-CLIPS. The aim is to lighten the representation of its semantic layer by reducing the number of encoded relations. A prediction calculation on the impact of introducing inheritance as regards space occupancy is carried out, which yields a significant space reduction of 22%. This is corroborated by its actual application that reduces the number of explicitly encoded relations in this lexicon by 18.4%. Later on, we study the issues that inheritance poses to the Lexical Resources and discuss sensitive solutions, illustrated by examples, to tackle each of them. Finally, we present a discussion on the application of inheritance, from which two advantages arise: consistency enhancement and inference capabilities.