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<Paper uid="A00-2008">
  <Title>c johnson@soliloquy.corn</Title>
  <Section position="2" start_page="0" end_page="56" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
1 The FrameNet Project
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"/>
    <Section position="1" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
1.1 What is frame semantics?
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> Frame semantics characterizes the semantic and syntactic properties of predicating words by relating them to semantic frames. These are schematic representations of situations involving various participants, props, and other conceptual roles, each of which is a frame element (FE).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> The semantic arguments of a predicating word correspond to the FEs of the frame or frames associated with that word.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2"> Frames are organized in a structure that can be modeled by an inheritance lattice. They range from being very general, like case frames (Fillmore 1968) or other simple event schemas underlying thematic roles, to being lexically specific. The most interesting frames are those at an intermediate level of specificity which encapsulate generalizations about the semantic and syntactic properties of word classes that are overlooked by thematic role analyses.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="2" start_page="0" end_page="56" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
1.2 An example
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> One example is the commercial transaction frame, which includes the following FEs: Buyer, Seller, Goods, and Money. The following sentence schemas show how these FEs are expressed differently by different Commercial Transaction words: Buyer bought Goods from Seller for Money Buyer paid Seller Money for Goods Buyer paid Money to Seller for Goods Seller sold goods to Buyer for Money Seller sold Buyer Goods for Money Buyer spent Money on Goods (Seller not expressed) Goods cost Buyer Money (Seller not expressed) Different words assign the Commercial Transaction FEs to different Phrase Types (PTs) and Grammatical Functions (GFs). For example, buy treats the Buyer as an NP subject (i.e.  External Argument) and the Seller as a PP complement headed by from, while sell treats the Buyer as a direct object or a PP complement headed by to and the Seller as a subject. The purpose of FrameNet annotation is to gather information like this about the grammatical realization of FEs for various frames.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="3" start_page="56" end_page="56" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
1.2 Project goals
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> The goals of the project are to create a database of information about English words and the frames they inherit, provide annotated corpus examples that illustrate how information about FEs is expressed by complements and modifiers of these words in attested sentences, and contribute to a suite of software tools to support annotation, database building, and database interface.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> An important part of FrameNet work is the annotation of corpus sentences with frame-semantic information. We use the British National Corpus (BNC), because no equally comprehensive corpus exists for American English (though efforts are underway to create a comparable American National Corpus--see Fillmore et al. 1998). Each annotated example sentence shows argument-structure properties of one target verb, adjective or noun. The main task of annotation is to tag the arguments (and occasionally modifiers) of the target with the names of the FEs that they express. A secondary task is to mark other lexicographically relevant elements, such as support verbs of target nouns, and certain non-meaningful elements that indicate lexicographically relevant grammatical constructions (e.g. extraposition and the existential construction). (See Fillmore &amp; Atkins 1998 on lexicographic relevance.) Here is an example sentence from the BNC showing the annotation properties of the complements of the target verb tell: (1) \[Maltravers (Speaker, NP, Ext)\] decided not to tell \[Stephen (Addressee, NP, Obj)\] \[about the inscription in the Le Carr6 book (Topic, PPabout, Comp)\].</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2"> The annotated constituents appear in brackets. Following each constituent is a set of parentheses containing the FE, PT and GF associated with that constituent (actual annotations consist of XML markup created using the Alembic Workbench software from the Mitre Corporation). PT and GF information is added by an automatic phrase labeler developed by the technical team.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
  </Section>
  <Section position="3" start_page="56" end_page="58" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
2 The FrameNet tagset
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"/>
    <Section position="1" start_page="56" end_page="57" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
2.1 Phrase Types
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> Below are the FrameNet Phrase Types. This is intended to be a comprehensive list of the types of syntactic constituent that can express FEs of major predicating words of English (nouns, verbs and adjectives). These constituents occur either as arguments or as lexicographically relevant modifiers. In constructing this list, we made extensive reference to the Comlex syntax (Meyers et al. 1995).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1">  VPfin Finite verb phrase (we atefish) VPbrst Bare stem VP (let us eatfish) VPto To-marked infinitive VP (we want to eat  Finite clause (it's nice thatyou came) WH-clause (ask who won) lflwhether clause (ask if we won) Gerundive clause (we saw them running) To-marked clause (we want them to win) For-to-marked clause (we would like for them to win) Bare stem clause (we insist that they</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="3"> In certain cases FrameNet marks as two constituents what are treated as &amp;quot;small clauses&amp;quot; in some analyses. For example, in the sentence I consider Pat a genius, Pat and a genius would be tagged separately.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="2" start_page="57" end_page="57" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
2.2 Grammatical Functions
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> Below is a list of the FrameNet GFs. This list is intended to characterize all the grammatical contexts relative to English verbs, adjectives and nouns that are regularly occupied by FEexpressing constituents. In this list, we do not make the traditional distinction between obliques and arguments/complements (the former are simply PP complements).</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="3" start_page="57" end_page="58" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
2.3 Nonexpression of FEs
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> Besides being expressed by the PTs and GFs listed above, FEs may remain unexpressed under the different conditions discussed below (see Fillmore 1986).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1">  In sentence (1), the FEs Message, Medium and Code are not expressed. It can however be inferred that there must be a Message, Medium  and Code in a communicative event of the type described by this sentence. These FEs, while conceptually present in this sentence, are optionally expressed, and there are no particular restrictions on their nonexpression. This is called Indefinite Null Instantiation (INI).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2">  With some words, an FE may be unexpressed in a sentence only if it assumed that the person to whom the sentence is addressed has specific information about the frame element in question. This kind of non-expression is called Definite Null Instantiation (DNI). For example, the words tell, inform and notify allow a Message to be omitted when it is clear what the Message is, e.g. How did I know you won? Because Pat already tom me.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="3">  instantiation Certain grammatical constructions, such as Passive and Imperative, allow an External Argument FE to be unexpressed, e.g. Harsh things were said, Tell me about yourself. This is  (CNI).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="4"> FrameNet annotation marks prominent unexpressed FEs as well as FEs that are expressed overtly. In order to achieve this, we place the symbols INI, DNI and CNI immediately after the target word in every annotated sentence, and place the appropriate FE tag on the appropriate symbol. For example, the  case of DNI discussed above would be annotated as follows: (2) \[Pat (Speaker)\] already told INI \[DNI (Message)\] CNI \[me (Addressee)\].</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="4" start_page="58" end_page="58" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
2.4 Frame Elements
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> Frames are organized into the following domains: Body, Chance, Cognition, Communication, Emotion, Health, Life Stages, Motion, Perception, Society, Space, Time, Transaction, and a General domain. Each domain contains several frames that characterize different word classes. Because there are many frames, it is not possible to give the complete list of FEs. The next section discusses FEs from the Communication domain.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
  </Section>
  <Section position="4" start_page="58" end_page="60" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
3 Communication frames
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> It is typically the case that different frames in the same domain share FEs. For that reason, each domain can be characterized by a basic frame that defines its FEs in general terms, and more specific frames, corresponding to word classes, that are based on this basic frame through inheritance or some other principled relation. Let us consider the basic frame of verbal communication.</Paragraph>
    <Section position="1" start_page="58" end_page="58" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
3.1 Basic Verbal Communication frame
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> The following FEs consistently appear in frames relating to verbal communication:  These FEs all derive their meaning from the concept of a basic communicative event. Clearly a true frame representation cannot just consist of a list of role names, but must characterize such events. Currently FrameNet frame descriptions exist only in text form, but the ultimate aim is to express them in a machine-readable format. An important component of such a representation will be feature structures that express relations between frames symbolically. These might be combined with computational event models that are able to generate inferences, such as the x-schemas developed by Bailey et al. (1997) and Narayanan (1997).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> The FEs of the Basic Verbal Communication frame are relevant to sentence (1) above, in which the Speaker is expressed as an NP Ext, the Addressee is expressed as an NP Obj, and the Topic is expressed as a PP Comp headed by about. The other FEs are not expressed.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2"> We will examine how the FEs above are realized in different Communication frames, and in the process, will see some of the kinds of generalizations that can be expressed through frame-semantic lexical analysis.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="2" start_page="58" end_page="58" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
3.2 Other frames in the Communication domain
The Basic Verbal Communication frame
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> characterizes events of verbal communication in the most general terms. Different Communication words represent different types of communicative event and different ways of construing such events. Generalizations over these words are captured by different frames in the domain. Some focus on, or profile, in Langacker's (1987) terminology, the relation between a Speaker and a propositional Message.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> These are grouped into frames characterizing different speech acts, e.g. asking (Questioning frame), requesting (Request frame), asserting (Statement frame), and promising (Commitment frame). A few words profile the relation between a Speaker and an act of speaking, but not the propositional Message communicated (talk, speak). Some denote events of reciprocal communication (e.g. discuss, argue, conversation, etc.). And so on.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2"> The following sections summarize properties of specific frames, and discuss some assumptions about the ontology of the Communication domain that might account for these properties.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="3" start_page="58" end_page="59" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
3.3 The Statement frame
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> Verbs and nouns in the Statement frame profile a relation between a Speaker and a propositional  Message that has the speech act status of an assertion. Because of the importance of the Message FE, these words frequently occur with Sfin Comp (finite clausal complements): (3) \[Others (Speaker, NP, Ext)\] assert \[that anthropology is the tree and sociology the branch (Message, Sfin, Comp)\].</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> (4) \[Managers (Speaker, NP, Ext)\] claim \[there was no radiological hazzard to staff or the public (Message, S fin, Comp)\].</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2"> (5) \[His (Speaker, Poss, Gen)\] claims \[to have  more energy (Message, VPto, Comp)\] are simply laughable.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="3"> Message can be expressed with different PPs as well. For example, with the target noun claim, it can be expressed as a to-marked infinitive VP, as in example (5).</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="4" start_page="59" end_page="59" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
3.4 The Speaking frame
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> Verbs and nouns in the Speaking frame profile a relation between a Speaker and an act of speaking, but do no allow a Message to be expressed:  (6) \[She (Speaker, NP, Ext)\] never spoke \[about  her feelings (Topic, PPabout, Comp)\]. This fact can be explained if we analyze the basic meaning of Speaking words as being something like 'X say something'. The Message role can be thought of as being incorporated into this meaning, with incorporation in this case being equivalent to obligatory INI.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="5" start_page="59" end_page="59" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
3.5 The Request frame
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> Like words in the Statement frame, these words frequently occur with clausal Complements.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> However, because these Complements express requests rather that assertions, they often occur as bare stem clauses: (7) In all cases \[the respondent (Speaker, NP, Ext)\] may request \[in writing (Medium, PPin, Comp)\] \[that the disciplinary findings be published (Message, Sbrst, Comp)\].</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="6" start_page="59" end_page="60" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
3.6 The Conversation flame
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> One class of words in the Communication domain does not use the FEs Speaker and Addressee as they occur in other frames. These are nouns and verbs or reciprocal communication, which are treated in the Conversation frame. In this frame, the human interlocutors can be expressed in separate constituents, assigned the roles Protagonist-I (Prot-1) and Protagonist-2 (Prot-2), or they can be expressed in a single conjoined or plural constituent, assigned the role Protagonists (Prots).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> This class of words demonstrates the complex interaction of frames. The FEs Prot-1, Prot-2 and Prots are not equivalent to any of the Basic Verbal Communication FEs, but do relate to them in a regular way. Each of these roles must be thought of as relating to two or more Communicative subevents, and as corresponding to a Speaker in some and an Addressee in others. This basic structure is taken not from any frame in the domain of Communication, but from a Reciprocity frame, which is in the General domain. The Reciprocity frame may be thought of as an Aktionsart frame that structures events and relations from other frames in a particular way, such that there are multiple subeventualities of the same type as that of the input frame, and the bindings or fillers of the roles are reversed from one subeventuality to the another.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2"> The complexity introduced by frames such as these points to the need to distinguish between conceptual roles and FEs in any given frame.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="3"> While the Communication roles Speaker and Addressee are not FEs in the Conversation frame, they are conceptual roles, because the conceptual representation of Conversation makes reference to them. (In the Speaking frame discussed above, we can also think of the incorporated Message role as being a conceptual role rather than an FE.) FEs in any given frame should therefore be defined as those roles for which the frame specifies conventional means of syntactic expression, even if these means are not employed in all sentences.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="4"> 3.6.1 Disjoint expression: Prot-1 and Prot-2 Here is a BNC example of argue with a disjoint expression of interlocutors:  (8) &amp;quot;\[You (Prot-1, NP, Ext)\] can't argue  headed by with. This is consistent with the general behavior of the Reciprocity frame as it occurs in combination with other frames and domains (e.g. Pat had a collision/relationship/agreement with Kim).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="5"> 3. 6.2 Joint expression: Protagonists Here are BNC examples of the joint expression of interlocuters with argue:  (9) \[They (Prots, NP, Ext)\] argued \[angrily (Manner, AdvP, Mod)\] \[over who was the real &amp;quot;Prince of Sleaze&amp;quot; (Topic, PPover, Comp)\]. (10) \[Mr. and Mrs. Popple (Prots, NP, Ext)\] always argued \[INI (Topic)\] at least once a week.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="7" start_page="60" end_page="60" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
3.7 FrameNet complements existing lexical
resources
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> FrameNet annotations provide more detail than existing lexical resources about the way in which particular semantic roles (i.e. FEs) are linked with particular means of syntactic expression.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> Since different senses of ambiguous words are defined relative to different frames, this linking information could potentially be used for lexical disambiguation.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2"> For example, consider the verb argue as it is treated in the WordNet database (Fellbaum 1998). Below are the three WordNet senses of argue, and the sentence frames that are associated with each sense: Sense 1: argue, reason -- (present reasons and arguments) EX: Sam and Sue argue EX: Sam wants to argue with Sue Sense 2: argue, contend, debate, fence -- (have an argument about something) EX: Sam and Sue argue EX; Sam wants to argue with Sue Sense 3: argue, indicate -- (give evidence of; &amp;quot;The evidence argues for your claim&amp;quot;; &amp;quot;The results indicate the need for more work&amp;quot;) The three senses listed above correspond to three different frames: Sense 1 corresponds to the Statement frame, Sense 2 to the Conversation frame, and Sense 3 to the Evidence frame in the Cognition domain. However, the information about sentence frames provided in WordNet does not correspond to the generalizations that are apparent in FrameNet. For example, WordNet gives the same sentence frames for Senses 1 and 2, while in the FrameNet database, the senses of argue defined relative to the Statement and Conversation frames are characterized by different argument structures: only Statement argue allows finite clausal complements expressing Message; Conversation argue has the properties of other reciprocal communication words, which Statement argue lacks, and does not allow clausal Complements (or any other expression of Message).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="3"> COMLEX (Meyers et al. 1995) recognizes the syntactic frames in which argue occurs, but does not provide information about the linking of syntactic constituents with semantic roles, or about the different complementation properties of different senses of ambiguous words.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="4"> Conclusion FrameNet semantic annotation captures human knowledge about the ways in which semantic roles (FEs) are conventionally expressed by different words in various word classes and domains. The kind of information in the FrameNet database is not expressed in the same level of depth in any existing print dictionary or computational lexical resource. While WordNet describes semantic relations between words, it does not recognize the conceptual schemas, i.e. frames, that mediate in these relations, and therefore does not have the means to link arguments of predicating words with the semantic roles they express. COMLEX and NOMLEX provide detailed information about the syntactic frames in which verbs and nouns occur, but also lack a means to link syntactic arguments with semantic roles. FrameNet therefore provides information that complements major existing lexical resources.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
  </Section>
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