Synonym (SYN)

The CASTEMO data model recommends a strong understanding of synonymy. For two lexemes to be related with the Synonym Relation, they need to have the same Superclass (if there isare more superclasses, they need to share all of them). Also, if they are related to a treebank, the meaning ID in the relevant treebank needs to be the same.

This strong understanding allows to consider synonymy as "contagious": if A is synonym of B and B is synonym of C, then A is synonym of C.

The Synonym Relation includes also cross-language equivalence (e.g. English "dog" ~ German "Hund").

The Synonym relation helps to extend database queries by also including the Synonyms of Concepts and Actions queried. Through Concepts used in Classification, synonymy can also help build sets of entities for analysis (e.g. including all Living Beings classified either as "dog (English)" or as "hound(English)" or as "Hund (German)").