A Lightweight String Based Method of Encoding Etymologies in Linked Data Lexical Resources

In this submission, we propose an approach to encoding etymological information as strings with formal syntax (“etymology strings”). We begin by discussing the advantages of such an approach compared to modelling etymologies and etymons explicitly as RDF individuals. Next we give a formal description of the regular language underlying our approach as an Extended Backus-Naur Form grammar (EBNF). We use the Chamuça Hindi lexicon as a test case for our approach and show a practical application of the approach using SPARQL queries that extract necessary information from etymological strings.