Seminar 1 March 2006 1

Chapter 8 Part II (pp. 274-308)

Basic Processing in Ontological Semantic Text Analysis

Sergei Nirenburg

Victor Raskin

Seminar 1 March 2006 2

Part I (Quick Review)

• Tokenization, lexical look-up, syntactic analysis

• Semantic dependencies– Proposition– Semantic restriction

• Ontological Semantics as argument-taking concept

• Measure ontological distance

Seminar 1 March 2006 3

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

Seminar 1 March 2006 4

Part II (Overview)

• When basic procedures returns no answer

• Processing beyond semantic dependencies

• Processing at the suprapropositional Level

Seminar 1 March 2006 5

When basic procedures returns no answer

• Relaxation of semantic restrictions (solution)

• Processing nonliteral language

• Processing unattested input

• Processing ellipsis

Seminar 1 March 2006 6

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

Seminar 1 March 2006 7

RELAXABLE-TO

• The pianist played Bach

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

Seminar 1 March 2006 8

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

Seminar 1 March 2006 9

‘Convince’ as Subclass of ‘Win’

• Win Opposition-Event Contradict Assertive-Act Argue Convince

• Not sufficiently dealt with in TMR

Seminar 1 March 2006 10

Processing Unattested Input

• Unattested proper names

• Inc., GmbH, Corp., Cie, NA or Ltd.

• Uttestable material is categorized as a kind of proper name

Seminar 1 March 2006 11

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

Seminar 1 March 2006 12

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)

Seminar 1 March 2006 13

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?

Seminar 1 March 2006 14

Beyond Semantic Dependencies

• Aspect

• Time

• Modality

Seminar 1 March 2006 15

Aspect

• Two properties: PHASE and ITERATION

• PHASE– BEGIN, CONTINUE, END

– BEGIN/CONTINUE/END (momentary)

• ITERATION– Repetitiveness– Value: MULTIPLE

Seminar 1 March 2006 16

Assigning Properties

Seminar 1 March 2006 17

The Aspectual Value

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

Seminar 1 March 2006 18

Phrasal Verb

• Drink up

• Up is part of

a derivational form

• Like -ed

Seminar 1 March 2006 19

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

Seminar 1 March 2006 20

Ontological Concept for ‘Wednesday’

Seminar 1 March 2006 21

• 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.

Seminar 1 March 2006 22

Ontological Concept for ‘Often’

• Standard abstract scalar range for most 0.6-0.9

Seminar 1 March 2006 23

Proposition Time

• June 11, 2000 (absolute time)

• Wednesday GET-PROPOSITION-TIME

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

Seminar 1 March 2006 24

Seminar 1 March 2006 25

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

Seminar 1 March 2006 26

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).

Seminar 1 March 2006 27

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

Seminar 1 March 2006 28

Two Epistemic Modalities

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

• Default= 1 (no clues whether correct)

Seminar 1 March 2006 29

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)

Seminar 1 March 2006 30

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).

Seminar 1 March 2006 31

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)

Seminar 1 March 2006 32

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.

Seminar 1 March 2006 33

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

Seminar 1 March 2006 34

Suprapropositional Level

• Reference

• Discourse (no particular solution)

• Style (no particular solution)

Seminar 1 March 2006 35

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.

Seminar 1 March 2006 36

Authors’ Contributions(a personal note)

• Knowledge retaining system (coreference)

• Modality

• Argument-structure (?)

Seminar 1 March 2006 37

Questions?