Multilingual Modelling with Wordnets: Metonymy Travels, Metaphor Wanders
Apr 17, 2026 8 views 
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In this talk, I introduce recent work on modelling metaphorical and metonymic extensions in lexical networks, focusing on ChainNet, and show how these patterns can be examined both within and across languages. This multilingual perspective is enabled by the Open Multilingual Wordnet, which brings together lexical data from many languages within a shared semantic framework and allows comparison of meaning structures at scale. I discuss both its strengths—such as the ability to capture fine-grained distinctions—and its limitations, including uneven coverage and structural inconsistencies across languages.