Argument structure constructions in a Natural Language Processing environment Alba Luzondo-Oyón (Corresponding author) Dpto. de Filologías Extranjeras y sus Lingüísticas Facultad de Filología Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia c/ Senda del Rey 7 28040, Madrid, Spain [email protected]Landline: +34 913988699 Francisco Ruiz de Mendoza-Ibáñez University of La Rioja Philology Building c/San José de Calasanz 33 26004, Logroño, La Rioja, Spain [email protected]Abstract: This paper contributes to the field of computational Construction Grammar (cf. Steels, 2012; van Trijp, 2011) by providing a linguistically-oriented formalized treatment of argument structure constructions within the architecture of a multipurpose lexico- conceptual knowledge base for Natural Language Processing systems known as FunGramKB (Periñán, 2013). More concretely, we analyze three members of the family of the English resultative, namely, the resultative (e.g. He hammered the metal flat/into a flat sheet ), the caused-motion construction (e.g. He shoved the canoe into the water) and the way construction (e.g. He fought his way free/to freedom), paying special attention to lexical-constructional integration variability. Thus, the present article offers a description of the format of constructional schemata in FunGramKB as machine-tractable representations of constructions and proposes a ‘splitting-like’ solution (à la Boas, 2003) to handle the mismatches resulting from 1
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Argument structure constructions in a Natural Language Processing
environment
Alba Luzondo-Oyón
(Corresponding author)Dpto. de Filologías Extranjeras y sus Lingüísticas
Abstract: This paper contributes to the field of computational Construction Grammar (cf. Steels, 2012; van Trijp, 2011) by providing a linguistically-oriented formalized treatment of argument structure constructions within the architecture of a multipurpose lexico-conceptual knowledge base for Natural Language Processing systems known as FunGramKB (Periñán, 2013). More concretely, we analyze three members of the family of the English resultative, namely, the resultative (e.g. He hammered the metal flat/into a flat sheet), the caused-motion construction (e.g. He shoved the canoe into the water) and the way construction (e.g. He fought his way free/to freedom), paying special attention to lexical-constructional integration variability. Thus, the present article offers a description of the format of constructional schemata in FunGramKB as machine-tractable representations of constructions and proposes a ‘splitting-like’ solution (à la Boas, 2003) to handle the mismatches resulting from lexical-constructional fusion. We finally argue that, in the case of FunGramKB, a feasible computational implementation must be based on constructional subtypes rather than on broad-scale constructions of the Goldbergian kind.
Keywords: Construction Grammar; argument-structure constructions; Natural Language Processing; FunGramKB.
Highlights:
We show how constructions can be handled in a computational environment. We analyze three members of the family of the English resultative. We offer a description of the format of constructional schemata. Lexical-constructional fusion mismatches require a ‘splitting-like’ solution.
etc., thus leading to the creation of rich frames of knowledge such as those one can
find in FrameNet (see Luzondo and Jiménez, 2014 for a discussion).
4. Linking linguistic theory with FunGramKB
Having explained how constructions are handled in FunGramKB, we would now like
to close this article by establishing a connection between the way FunGramKB
approaches constructional schemas and the distinct, yet complementary, linguistic
treatment of argument-structure constructions proposed by Goldberg and by Boas, or
in a meaning-construction model like the LCM (cf. Section 2.1.1).
In light of the constraints imposed by the machine, which result in the creation
of constructional subtypes (e.g. way construction type 1, way construction type 2,
etc.), it is interesting to observe that such a procedure brings FunGramKB somewhat
closer to a mini-constructionist approach of the kind propounded by Boas (2003), than
to the Goldbergian (Goldberg 1995, 2006) account. To illustrate, take Goldberg’s
(1995, p. 190) representation of the anatomy of the resultative construction (Figure 9):
31
Figure 9 shows that the construction is associated with the semantics ‘X
CAUSES Y TO BECOME Z’, here represented as CAUSE-BECOME <agt pat
result-goal>, where the elements between brackets are the argument roles of the
construction. PRED, in turn, is the variable that will be filled by a given verb together
with its participant roles (e.g. RUN <runner>). These participants fuse with the
argument roles of the construction in a principled manner.18 Solid lines between the
argument roles and the participant roles of the verb indicate that such roles must be
obligatorily fused, while dashed lines are employed to specify roles that can be
contributed by the construction, in this case, “patient” and “result-goal”. At the
explanatory level, Goldberg (1995, p. 190) contends that the construction can add the
result-goal argument when the construction incorporates a verb like wipe, for
example, He wiped the table clean; alternatively, both the patient and result-goal roles
may be supplied, as in He talked himself blue in the face. Nevertheless, the dashed
lines in Figure 9 show that, at the descriptive level, Goldberg’s schematic
representation accounts for the possibility of contributing both the y and z arguments
(instead of only the latter) under the same general pattern. This skeletal structure
corresponds to the AVM of the resultative-type 2, leaving the resultative-type 1 out of
the picture and, with it, the possibility of matching an input text that only contributes
the result component. Since both general principles (i.e. the ‘Semantic Coherence
Principle’ and the ‘Correspondence Principle’) and construction-specific constraints
regulate fusion mechanisms, Goldberg’s (1995) approach does not need to postulate
sub-types of constructions, thus maintaining a level of generalization that cannot be
32
translated into the Grammaticon of FunGramKB for the reasons specified thus far.
Therefore, in line with scholars like Boas (2003, 2013), Iwata (2008), Nemoto (1998),
inter alios, Goldberg’s abstract meaningful constructions turn out to be too broad-
ranging and, in consequence, for our purposes here, they are not always suitable for
an NLP environment which requires different constructional schemas to process input
texts that linguistically realize the same construction.
A similar situation holds for the LCM. In this model, subsumption, which is a
cognitive process whereby lower-level structure is built into higher-level structure, is
regulated by a number of both ‘internal’ and/or ‘external’ constraints. The former
“work on the basis of the compatibility between the conceptual characterizations of
lexical predicates and argument-structure constructions” (Ruiz de Mendoza, 2013, p.
256). Likewise, cognitive phenomena such as high-level metaphor and metonymy are
treated as external constraining factors whose recurrent presence in many of the
argument-structure constructions discussed in the literature also affect subsumption
processes by either permitting or disallowing them (see Ruiz de Mendoza and Pérez,
2001; Peña, 2009 for examples and details).19 In other words, external constraints are
based on how lexical structure can be re-construed in order to make it fit into a given
construction. For example, the verb stare can be used with the caused-motion
construction in She stared me out of the room if the target of staring is re-construed as
the object of an effectual action (cf. Ruiz de Mendoza and Mairal, 2008, p. 378 for a
discussion of related examples). In this sense, the LCM takes sides with Goldberg’s
proposal in that they both aim to provide an economic solution to the task of
delimiting lexical-constructional integration through the postulation of broad
constraints. To better understand this position, take two more instances of the caused-
motion construction: They scared the horses out of the horse lot (Google Books
Corpus, 2012) and He laughed himself into the house (Google Books Corpus, 2011).
In the former example, which would correspond to the AVM in Figure 7, the
construction contributes the goal argument alone, while in the latter, both “himself”
and “into the house” are supplied by the grammatical pattern, thus coinciding with the
AVM in Figure 8. For the LCM, by contrast, there is no need to consider the existence
of separate constructions, but instead each realization is licensed via external
constraints. More concretely, They scared the horses out of the horse lot activates the
high-level metaphor AN EXPERIENTIAL ACTION IS AN EFFECTUAL ACTION,
whereby the horses, which are the targets of non-physical impact, are figuratively
33
understood as if they were the objects of actual physical impact. The grammatical
metaphor AN ACTIVITY IS AN EFFECTUAL ACTION is at work in He laughed
himself into the house. Here, the fake-reflexive is not treated as an affected object but
as the object of change (Ruiz de Mendoza and Mairal, 2007, p. 44). In other words,
whereas in The audience laughed the actor off the stage/out of the room, the actor is
both the target of the action and the object of a change, in He laughed himself into the
house, “himself” is not the one being laughed at, but simply the one laughing at
something while moving into the house. As things stand now, even though the
Grammaticon is grounded in the four constructional levels of the LCM, it seems
largely impossible to endow the machine with the apparatus of highly abstract
external constraints put forward by this linguistic model.
In conclusion, the constructionist account that better fits the necessities of the
machine, or the one that is better aligned with the computational analysis carried out
herein, is the one provided by Boas (2003, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011), who proposes
mini-constructions, i.e. parings of a particular semantics/pragmatics with a very
specific syntactic frame. In FunGramKB, mini-constructions translate as follows:
each constructional sub-schema is conceived of as sharing certain properties (e.g. its
Aktionsart adscription, COREL schema, etc.) but also as differing in the number and
nature of the variables contributed by the construction, resulting in bundles of specific
constraints and specific descriptors, through which form and function are codified.
This means that, as is done in Boas (2011), our focus must be on a more concrete
level of analysis (i.e. constructional subtypes) in order for machine-based natural
language processing to be feasible. Note that in an NLP environment, however, form
and function are divided into several components, the form end of the construction
being captured by the boxes labeled “phrase realization” and “syntax”, while the
meaning end is accounted for by the rest of the descriptors and constraints.
5. Conclusions
This article has presented readers with the essentials of the relatively recent NLP
project called FunGramKB and, more concretely, with the architecture of the L1-
Constructicon, the component where constructional schemas are represented by
means of AVMs consisting of a set of highly specific descriptors and constraints. Our
aim was to show how argument-structure constructions are handled in a
computational environment. In order to do so, we have examined in some detail three
34
well-known grammatical patterns, namely, the resultative, the caused-motion and the
way construction. Upon analyzing the complex behavior of such configurations in
light of the restrictions imposed by the machine, we have concluded that it is
necessary to descend to a more concrete level of analysis in which general
constructions are split into more specific sub-types of constructional schemas, much
in line with Boas’s approach to constructional behavior. The study of additional
argument-structure patterns will confirm or discard this proposal.
Finally, although one may argue that the account presented here may lead to
the over-generation of constructional schemas, the ultimate computational goal is not
to find a highly economic solution to lexical-constructional merging, à la Goldberg,
but rather to ensure that natural language understanding is in fact accomplished.
Acknowledgement
The research on which this paper is based has received financial support from the
Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, grants no. FFI2011-29798-C02-
01 and FFI2013-43593-P.
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1 The interested reader is further referred to Jiménez and Luzondo (2013) for an RRG account of the English resultative. Departing from Van Valin’s (2005, p. 239) description of the resultative pattern, the article offers a finer-grained analysis of such a configuration by drawing on the work on constructional schemas carried out in Diedrichsen (2010, 2011), and Nolan (2011ab). 2 Google Books. Grow Fruits & Vegetables the Way They Used to Taste. John Festus Adams. 1988. Accessed on Oct. 16, 2014.3 Google Books. White Turtle. Merlinda Bobis. 1999. Accessed on Oct. 18, 2014.4 In the field of NLP, probabilistic techniques have been successfully applied to a variety of natural language processing problems (e.g. automatic translation, semantic disambiguation, etc.) and, as far as coverage is concerned, they clearly outperform rationalist or symbolic methods. However, as noted in Basili et al. (1996, p. 59), probabilistic models are “intrinsically unable to provide insights into the mechanisms of human communication” and “eventually a human analyst is to make sense of the data” (see also Cimiano et al., 2014, p. 6). 5 In FunGramKB, by a splitting approach (see Gonzálvez, 2008, p. 35; Boas, 2010) we specifically refer to the need to generate finer-grained constructional schemas in order to adequately capture the various ways in which verbs and constructions interact to yield specific input texts. 6 http://www.vivaveracruz.com/blog/?m=201010. Accessed on Oct. 18, 2014.7 While low-level cognitive models consist in non-generic semantic structures that result from the principled connection of elements from our encyclopedic knowledge, high-level cognitive models arise by abstracting away conceptual material shared by low-level cognitive models. For example, such disparate notions as ‘kill’ , ‘hit’, and ‘cut’ are envisaged as ‘actions’ performed with the help of instruments and having visible effects (all these are high-level constructs). Non-situational or propositional cognitive models are those that designate entities and their relations. In turn, situational cognitive models are conventional, coherently connected series of events such as ‘cooking a meal’, ‘going to the dentist’ or ‘taking a bath’ (cf. Ruiz de Mendoza, 2007, 2014).8 There are three broad relation types at this level: logical (e.g. cause-effect, evidence-conclusion), temporal (e.g. precedence, simultaneity), and conceptual (similarity, contrast, conditioning, concession).9 For a discussion of constructions belonging to levels 2, 3 and 4, we refer the reader to Mairal and Periñán (2014) and Mairal (fc.). 10 Interestingly, this decision is fully consonant with Goldberg’s (2006, p. 25) claim that “each argument structure pattern is best analyzed on its own terms, without relying on explicit or implicit reference to possible alternative paraphrases” and with Ruiz de Mendoza and Mairal’s (2011) view of the notion of alternation as epiphenomenal, i.e. an unsystematic side-effect of deeper processes licensing or blocking lexical-constructional integration. For example, the causative/inchoative alternation is grounded in the presence versus the absence of a ‘causal’ element (cf. The wind opened the door ‘The wind caused the door to be opened’/The door opened ‘The door happened to open’). But there are verbs that can be used in the alternation where the causal element is irrelevant. Take the verb handle, which can be employed in the inchoative construction (This car won’t handle without the proper shock package) but does not really have a causative alternate (People like to handle this car can hardly be paraphrased as ‘People like to cause this car to be handled’). In its transitive use, the object handle is not an affected object, but a relevant part of the scope of a controlled action. On a deeper level of analysis, the inchoative use does not depend on the presence of a causative alternate, but on whether it is possible to think of the object as allowing the agent to perform the action. This “enabling” ability of the object, which has been frequently cited in the literature (cf. Heyvaert, 2003, p. 132), is an act of conceptual re-construal of what actually happens (i.e. we see a car as willfully allowing the action of which it is the object to be performed). In the LCM re-construal (usually in the form of high-level metaphor and metonymy) is seen as a licensing factor for some cases of lexical-constructional integration (see Ruiz de Mendoza and Mairal, 2008; Ruiz de Mendoza, 2013; and Ruiz de Mendoza and Galera, 2014). The interested reader is further referred to Barðdal et al. (2011) who claim that double object sentences and their corresponding to-variants (e.g. He gave her a sweater > He gave a sweater to her) show differences in interpretation and are therefore not mutually exchangeable.11 The interested reader is referred to van Trijp (2013) for a discussion of how approaches like Fluid Construction Grammar and Sign-Based Construction Grammar understand the notion of construction. 12 Note that in Kay’s (2013) approach, for example, many configurations do not qualify as constructions. Thus, a sharp distinction is sanctioned between constructions and ‘patterns of coinage’ (e.g. He sneezed the napkin off the table) on the grounds that the latter do not meet the condition of productivity. 13 FunGramKB constructs can be found in the linguistic realization or input text and in the conceptual representation (i.e. the COREL schema); the minimal constructs respectively being lexical units and ontological concepts. For instance, Periñán (2013, p. 215) argues that He fried the egg in the pan only consists of a Kernel-2 construction (“He fried the egg”), while the remaining components are constructs. This, for example, contrasts with the Golderbgian (2006) approach to the notion of construction according to which each of the words making up the above-mentioned sentence are constructions (i.e. “egg”, “pan”, etc.). In FunGramKB, the meaning of these constructs is directly derived from the meaning postulates of the concepts to which each of these lexical units is connected. For instance, pan is related to the ontological concept +PAN_00, whose meaning postulate is given in (i) together with a translation:
+(e2: +BE_01 (x1)Theme (x3: +ROUND_00)Attribute) *(e3: +BE_01 (x1)Theme (x4: +METAL_00)Attribute)*(e4: +COMPRISE_00 (x1)Theme (x5: +HANDLE_00)Referent)*(e5: +USE_00 (x6: +HUMAN_00)Theme (x1)Referent (f1: (e6: +COOK_00 (x6)Theme (x7)Referent))Purpose) = ‘A pan is a round metal container which usually has a handle. Generally, humans use pans to cook
something’.14 Periñán (2013, p. 215) further notes that “any construction is a construct itself, but not all constructs can be deemed to be constructions”. This means that in order to attain constructional status, the meaning of the whole sentence must exceed the sum of the parts, as in Anna ran the pavement thin (i.e. ‘Anna ran a lot and as a result, she caused the pavement to become thin’). 15 Asterisked examples inspired in the more exhaustive list provided by Wechsler (2005). See Boas (2011) for an in-depth investigation of the factors that may influence language users to produce and interpret unacceptable sentences like (4d) as acceptable, provided that the proper context is supplied. 16 As noted in Ruiz de Mendoza and Luzondo (2014), the origin of the resultative value of “to bits” is to be found in the metaphor CHANGES OF STATE ARE CHANGES OF LOCATION (Lakoff, 1993). This metaphor captures our tendency to correlate locations with how we feel in them (e.g. we feel cool in the shade, warm under the sun, etc.). Expressing result by means of a PP is useful when there is no clear adjectival form that captures the same meaning. Thus, in English the resultative element in The blacksmith hammered the metal into different shapes would be impossible to express by means of an adjective. 17 The intransitive resultative (e.g. The river froze solid) is also listed as a different construction. However, this pattern will not be accounted for in the present proposal. 18 In Goldberg’s work, fusion processes are regulated by means of two broad constraints: (i) the ‘Semantic Coherence Principle’ (i.e. “only roles which are semantically compatible can be fused”), and (ii) ‘Correspondence Principle’ (i.e. “each participant role that is lexically profiled and expressed must be fused with a profiled argument role of the construction”) (see Goldberg, 1995, p. 50). Note that the profiled participant roles of the verb and the profiled argument roles of the construction appear in bold letters. Lexically profiled participants are those entities that are obligatorily accessed and thus function as focal points. In turn, constructional profiling occurs as follows: “every argument role linked to a direct grammatical relation (SUBJ, OBJ or OBJ2) is constructionally profiled” (Goldberg, 1995, p. 48).19 These cognitive operations are termed high-level since they involve generic cognitive models thus working at higher levels of abstraction (e.g. the notions of ‘action’, ‘process’, ‘effect’, ‘cause’, etc.).