We present a methodology and tools that facilitate the acquisition of lexical-semantic knowledge about a language L. The lexicon that results from the process described in this paper expresses the meaning of words and phrases in L using a language-independent formal ontology, the OntoSem ontology. The acquisition process benefits from the availability of an ontological-semantic lexicon for English. The methodology also addresses the task of aligning any existing computational grammar of L with the expectations of the syntax-oriented zone of the ontological-semantic lexicon. Illustrative material in this paper is presented by means of the DEKADE knowledge acquisition environment.