Opposition Relations among Verb Frames

Anna Feltracco,Elisabetta Jezek,Bernardo Magnini

doi:10.3115/v1/w15-0803

Abstract

In this paper we propose a scheme for annotating opposition relations among verb frames in lexical resources. The scheme is tested on the T-PAS resource, an inventory of typed predicate argument structures for Italian, conceived for both linguistic research and computational tasks. After discussing opposition relations from a linguistic point of view and listing the tags we decided to use, we report the results of the experiment we performed to test the annotation scheme, in terms of interannotation agreement and linguistic analysis of annotated data.

Highlights

Several studies have been carried out on the definition and classification of oppositions in linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science and psychology
After presenting the main categories introduced in the literature for opposites, and inspecting whether and how they are implemented in lexical resources such as WordNet e FrameNet, before illustrating our annotation scheme of opposition relations among frames, we introduce the resource on which the annotation is being performed
We discover the most salient verbal patterns using a lexicographic procedure called Corpus Pattern Analysis (CPA) (Hanks, 2004), which relies on the analysis of co-occurrence statistics of syntactic slots in concrete examples found in corpora

Summary

Introduction

Several studies have been carried out on the definition and classification of oppositions in linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science and psychology. Two verbs are complementary (to accept / to reject; to succeed / to fail) when they oppose each other with regards to a distinction that is not polar but binary; in other words, complementaries partition a conceptual domain into mutually exclusive compartments For this reason, this opposition can be called binary opposition (Pustejovsky, 2000). Terms which denote reversive actions or events, such as build / destroy, assemble / disperse, wrap / unwrap, are reversives It has been proposed (Cruse 2011) that reversives include two main subtypes: directional opposites, defined as verbs denoting movement in opposite directions between two terminal states (such as rise / fall or enter / leave), and “more abstract examples” denoting change in opposite directions between two states (such as all the examples above). After presenting the main categories introduced in the literature for opposites, and inspecting whether and how they are implemented in lexical resources such as WordNet e FrameNet, before illustrating our annotation scheme of opposition relations among frames, we introduce the resource on which the annotation is being performed

The T-PAS Resource and Oppositions among Patterns

Motivation and Background

Annotation Schema for Opposite Relations

Pilot Experiment on T-PAS

Experimental Setting

Inter Annotator Agreement

Conclusions