Chapter 8 Part II (pp. 274-308)

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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 F to the game
• I finished the book
• Read, write, bind, copy, etc.
• The book reads well (AGENT of read is HUMAN)
• John shaved F (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 (gt), before (lt) at ()

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(No Transcript)
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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 (value 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 event
• want, hope, plan, wish, desire, strive, look
  forward 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
  properties. One can also evaluate another
  modality.
• like,admire, appreciate, praise, criticize,
  dislike, hate, denigrate, etc.
• Saliency
• Expresses the importance that the speaker
  attaches 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?