Seminar 1 March 20061 Chapter 8 Part II (pp. 274-308) Basic Processing in Ontological Semantic Text Analysis Sergei Nirenburg Victor Raskin.

Seminar 1 March 2006 1

Chapter 8 Part II (pp. 274-308)

Basic Processing in Ontological Semantic Text Analysis

Sergei Nirenburg

Victor Raskin

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Part I (Quick Review)

• Tokenization, lexical look-up, syntactic analysis

• Semantic dependencies– Proposition– Semantic restriction

• Ontological Semantics as argument-taking concept

• Measure ontological distance

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Text Meaning Representation

• A proximate goal of text analysis in ontological semantics

• “The TMRs contain instances of ontological concepts – events and objects” (pp. 301)

• Ontological system opts to retain the knowledge accumulated during its operation

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Part II (Overview)

• When basic procedures returns no answer

• Processing beyond semantic dependencies

• Processing at the suprapropositional Level

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When basic procedures returns no answer

• Relaxation of semantic restrictions (solution)

• Processing nonliteral language

• Processing unattested input

• Processing ellipsis

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Relaxation of semantic restrictions

• The gorilla makes tool

• The gorilla cooked dinner– Not all primates cook– Use the facet RELAXABLE-TO on the AGENT

property of PREPARE-FOOD

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RELAXABLE-TO

• The pianist played Bach

• An example of a nonliteral use of language• An example of metonymy• Different concepts are evoked

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Metaphorical Instance

• Mary won an argument with John– No sense of ‘argument’ matches WIN

• MILITATY-ACTIVITY, SPORTS ACTIVITY, GAME ACTIVITY

– If the RELAXABLE-TO facet of the THEME has no value

– System will search for an event whose selectional restrictions are matching

• Mary convinced John in an argument

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‘Convince’ as Subclass of ‘Win’

• Win Opposition-Event Contradict Assertive-Act Argue Convince

• Not sufficiently dealt with in TMR

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Processing Unattested Input

• Unattested proper names

• Inc., GmbH, Corp., Cie, NA or Ltd.

• Uttestable material is categorized as a kind of proper name

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• Fred locked the door with the kheegh– ‘Kheegh’ as a noun (LOCK-EVENT)

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Processing Ellipsis – no solution

• Nick went to the movies and Paul Φ to the game

• I finished the book– Read, write, bind, copy, etc.

• The book reads well (AGENT of ‘read’ is HUMAN)

• John shaved Φ (transitive intransitive)

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THEME

• Mary enjoyed the movie (Theme: SEE)

• Mary enjoyed the book (Theme: READ)

• Mary enjoyed the cake (Theme: INGEST)

• ?Mary enjoyed the lizard – An ellipsis– INGEST? SEE?

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Beyond Semantic Dependencies

• Aspect

• Time

• Modality

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Aspect

• Two properties: PHASE and ITERATION

• PHASE– BEGIN, CONTINUE, END

– BEGIN/CONTINUE/END (momentary)

• ITERATION– Repetitiveness– Value: MULTIPLE

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Assigning Properties

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The Aspectual Value

• begin, cease, commence, stop, finish, desist from, carry on, keep, continue

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Phrasal Verb

• Drink up

• Up is part of

a derivational form

• Like -ed

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Adverbials Denoting Aspect

• He sat on the bench on Wednesday– PHASE: CONTINUE, ITERATION – 1

• He sat on the bench every Wednesday– PHASE: CONTINUE, ITERATION – MULTIPLE

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Ontological Concept for ‘Wednesday’

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• Only the uses of every, each, etc. that refer to temporal units will be processed with the aspetual properties

• Not every table, each table, etc.

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Ontological Concept for ‘Often’

• Standard abstract scalar range for most 0.6-0.9

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Proposition Time

• June 11, 2000 (absolute time)

• Wednesday GET-PROPOSITION-TIME

• Speech act time – after (>), before (<) at (=)

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Modality

• Express attitudes• plan, try, hope, expect, want, intend, doubt, be sure, like

(to), mean, need, choose, propose, want, wish, dread, hate, loathe, love, prefer, deign, disdain, scorn, venture, afford, attempt, contrive, endeavor, fail, manage, neglect, undertake, vow, envisage

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Epistemic

• Expresses the attitude of the speaker toward the factivity of the proposition

• “The speaker does not believe that X” (value 0)

• “The speaker believes that possibly X” (value 0.6)

• “The speaker believes that X” (value 1).

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• Nomura Shoken announced that it has tied up with Credit 109.

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Two Epistemic Modalities

• The amount of investment in the joint venture is estimated at 34 million dollars.

• Default= 1 (no clues whether correct)

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Two Epistemic Modalities

• The amount of investment in the joint venture is estimated at 34 million dollars.

• 0.8-0.9 (because it is estimated)• Guess (0.3-0.7)

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Epiteuctic• Refers to the degree of success in attaining the results of the event

• Complete failure: – They never bothered to register to vote (value 0)

• Partial success:– They failed to recognize the tell-tale signs of an economic downturn (val

ue 0.2-0.8)

• Near success:– He almost broke the world record in pole vaulting (value 0.9)

• Complete success:– They reached the North Pole (value 1.0).

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Deontic• Deals with the semantics of obligation and permission.

• No obligation– British Petroleum may purchase crude oil from any supplier (value 0.0)

• Some hint of a non-binding obligation– There is no stipulation in the contract that Disney must pay access fees

to cable providers. (value 0.2)

• Possibility of an obligation– Kawasaki Steel may have to sell its South American subsidiary. (value 0.

8)

• An absolute obligation – Microsoft must appeal the decision within 15 days. (value 1.0)

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Other Modalities

• Volitive– Expresses the degree of desirability of an eve

nt – want, hope, plan, wish, desire, strive, look for

ward to, be interested in, etc.

• Potential– Deals with meanings that describe the ability

of the agent to perform an action.– capable of, be able to, etc.

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Other Modalities

• Evaluative – expresses attitudes to events, objects and pro

perties. One can also evaluate another modality.

– like,admire, appreciate, praise, criticize, dislike, hate, denigrate, etc.

• Saliency– Expresses the importance that the speaker att

aches to a component of text meaning.• It is unimportant that she is often late for work

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Suprapropositional Level

• Reference

• Discourse (no particular solution)

• Style (no particular solution)

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Reference and Coreference

• Retaining of accumulated knowledge• Unattested knowledge first stored in FR• Retrieve in latter mentions

• In June 1985, John was already thinking of leaving the Army, and Mary did not know it then.

• Every Wednesday Eric sat in the park, and so did Terry.

• Brian wanted to become a pilot, and so did his brother.

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Authors’ Contributions(a personal note)

• Knowledge retaining system (coreference)

• Modality

• Argument-structure (?)

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Questions?