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<Paper uid="C96-1025">
  <Title>Processing Metonymy: a Domain-Model Heuristic Graph Traversal Approach*</Title>
  <Section position="6" start_page="140" end_page="241" type="evalu">
    <SectionTitle>
5 Discussion
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> ()IIC eouhl (;omtm.re this approach to a concel)tbased, multi-role qualia structure. The semantic definition of ~t word is here the reference model of its head concept type; each relation path starting fi'om the head eon(:ept of this reference model is similar to a qualia role, in that; it; describes one of the semantic facets or 1)ossible uses of the word.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> In the context of a predicate, one of the concepts in the reference model is selected as the incolning point of a link from the predicate's inealfing representatk) n, The coneel)t-oriente, d domMmnlodel apl)roaeh advocated here hyI)othesizes that the behaviour of words is driven by their conceptuM ro|es in the domain. This has the advantage of factoring knowledge at the conceptual level, rather than having to distribute it at the level of words. This knowledge can then be shared by severM words. Sharing even o(:(:urs across languages (e. 9. Dutch (Spyns and Willems, 1995)).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> Moreover, the type hierarchy Mlows concepts, hence words, to inherit reference models from more M)stract (:olmepts, thus enabling more sitaring mM modularity. The distinction between local information aim information inherited through the hierarchy in filrthermore exploited when ranking different chains between two concept types.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> Another differelme resi(tes in the way flexibility is obtained, in \]hlstejovsky's coercion ine(:hanism (Pustejovsky, 1991), the argument's semantic type changes for a semantic type found in one of its qualia. In a variant approach (Mineur and Buitelaar, 1995), a word has no a priori semantic type; it in selected at composition time among the types found in the qualia. In our approach, the head concept type associated with an argument does not change. The chain found between this concept and the predicate's head concept only brings forward internmdiate concepts and relations which are aetualised in th(; presence of the I)re(ticate, and lead to a particular representation of their lnt?aning. As a side-effect, this approach ix able to handle sentences like (6) (7): (6) dotm bought a h)ng nOV6`-I (Godard and ,layez, :\[993) (7) an aIlg'ioI)lasty of a sovere stenosis Since the modifier (long, sew',re) and the action (verb 'bought', noun 'angioplasty') require incompatible types of the same noun (novel: event vs ot)ject, stenosis: state vs object), tyl)e changing via coercion cannot work on such sentences. This prol)lein does not occur in our approach.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> Type coercion assumes that the t)redi(:ate drives semantic eompositioll, and that the semantic representation of the argument inllst adapt to it. In  our method, both predicate and argument can make a step towards finding their semantic link.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> The resulting conceptual chain, as a whole, represents both the specific facet of the argument which is involved in the sentence and the conceptual role it plays in the predicate.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> The preferences that grammatical relations assign to conceptual relations drive path selection, taking into account the specific syntactic context in which a semantic composition is to occur. This is crucial to let, e.g., prepositions, influence the choice of the conceptual link and the resolution of the metonymy.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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