Comments to Karin Kipper

Christiane Fellbaum

Princeton University and

Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften

Some Questions for Discussion

• Semantic roles

• Syntactic frames

• Selectional restrictions

Semantic Roles

• Inventory: fine-grainedness vs. manageability

• Checklist of features (Dowty)?

Theme vs. Patient

• „P undergoes change“

• Moved entity is not changed? (put verbs)

• „hit“ entails a change?

Causer vs. Agent

• Agent can be involuntary, or Cause can be animate: I hit my knee against the table and knocked over the cup

Syntactic Frames

• Strict subcategorization or optional arguments and adjunct? E.g., cite does not require a Recipient, is not always a Transfer event

• „Generic“ arguments?• Syntax-semantics relation: how regular?

(What is a declarative frame?)

Syntax/Semantics

• Fine-grainedness of distinctions

Put-class is not homogeneous:

{Arrange/*lodge/*mount} X into Y, where Y is a resultant configuration

(beware polysemy of preposition!)

Arrange the oranges into a pyramid

Alternations

• Should causative break be considered a different sense than inchoative break?

Note that WN´s hierarchical structure forces a sense distinction—two different superordinates; senses are linked

Selectional Restrictions

• Class-based? Semantic sets?

• Selectional preferences (soft)?

Other Questions

• How were sense inventories compared?• What is relation of classes to subclasses—

what are hierarchical relations based on?• Why use WordNet 1.5--it‘s 10 years old• Why are idioms, phrasal verbs a problem?

• Were large clusters not predictive because of underspecification of Arg1, Arg2,...?