[Lexicog] Frame Semantics

[Ron Moe]

I just finished cross indexing the frames on the FrameNet web site with my
list of domains. There is a fair amount of correspondence between their
frames and my domains. However the two are not the same. A frame roughly
corresponds to a lexical set, the members of which each have the same case
frame. So there is a difference between a frame and what I consider to be a
semantic domain. For instance their treatment of emotion terms separates
'experiencer as subject' verbs "I hate X," from 'experiencer as object'
verbs "That irritates me." But their treatment helped me to develop a basic
template for all the emotion domains. I believe the insights provided by the
FrameNet project can be applied to other languages. I don't know that every
frame will occur in every language. But each of us needs to analyze the
frames of each lexical set in the language we are describing. The reason is
that we need to indicate the case frame of each verb, verbal noun, and
adjective in our definitions. We also need to indicate case relations and
how they are realized in our example sentences (e.g. angry with smb
about/that/because/when sth, mad at smb for sth, annoyed with smb for/at
sth, cross with smb, pissed at smb, be worked up about sth).

In English each emotion domain has (a) verbs in which the subject is the
experiencer (see 1 below), (b) nouns referring to the emotion (see 2 below),
(c) adjectives describing the experiencer (see 3 below), (d) verbs in which
the subject is the stimulus, i.e. causes the experiencer to feel the emotion
(see 8 below), (e) nouns that refer to the cause of the emotion (see 9
below), (f) adjectives describing the cause of the emotion (see 10 below).
The following is from my domain 'Angry':

(1) What words refer to feeling angry? be angry, feel angry, bristle, take
offense, resent, be in a temper, pissed off, pissed, be worked up, be up in
arms, in a huff, be disgusted, take something personally, take exception to,
be put out, feel put out,
This corresponds to the frame 'Experiencer subj'.

(2) What words refer to the feeling of anger? anger, annoyance, bitterness,
dander, fury, grudge, indignation, ire, outrage, rage, rancor, resentment,
temper, wrath,
This corresponds to the frame 'Emotion directed'.

(3) What words describe someone who feels angry? angry, aggravated, bitter,
embittered, cross, exasperated, incensed, indignant, irate, irked,
irritated, mad, miffed, nettled, offended, peeved, perturbed, piqued,
rancorous, riled, sore, upset, vexed, wroth,
This corresponds to the frame 'Emotion directed'.

(4) What words refer to feeling very angry? enraged, furious, furiously,
incensed, infuriated, irate, livid, full of resentment, seething, be on the
warpath, wrathful, have a tantrum, have a temper tantrum, boiling mad,
This corresponds to the frame 'Emotion directed'.

(6) What words refer to feeling angry for a long time? boil, burn, chafe,
fume, fuss, mope, seethe, simmer, smoulder, stew, sulk, sullen, bear a
grudge, hold a grudge against, have something against, have it in for, hold
something against someone, there is no love lost between,
This corresponds to the frames 'Emotion heat' and 'Emotion active'.

(8) What words refer to causing someone to feel angry? anger (v), make
someone angry, make someone mad, aggravate, antagonize, chafe, cross
someone, disturb, embitter, enrage, exasperate, gall, incense, infuriate,
insult (v), irk, madden, needle, nettle, offend, cause offense, peeve,
perturb,  pique, provoke, rankle, rile, vex, make your blood boil, make you
sick, get someone going, get someone's back up, wind someone up, be like a
red flag to a bull,
This corresponds to the frames 'Cause to experience' and 'Experiencer obj'.

(9) What words refer to something that causes someone to feel angry?
affront, aggravation, bitter pill to swallow, insult (n), offense, outrage,
vexation,
This corresponds to the frame 'Subject stimulus'.

(10) What words describe something that causes someone to feel angry?
aggravating, exasperating, galling, infuriating, insulting, irksome,
maddening, objectionable, offending, offensive, vexing,
This corresponds to the frame 'Subject stimulus'.

There are other parts of the template for 'Angry' that do not correspond to
any frame. However sometimes there are frames that deal with the semantic
component that is incorporated into the meanings of these words.

(5) What words describe a person who gets angry often or easily? have a
temper, irascible, bilious, cantankerous, choleric, cranky, grouch, hot
tempered, hot headed, ill-tempered, irascible, irritable, easily offended,
quick-tempered, prim, prude, sensitive, thin-skinned, touchy,

(7) What words refer to becoming angry? get angry, get mad, lose your
temper, fly off the handle, blow your top, hit the roof, go crazy, go nuts,
have a fit, go berserk, erupt,
This roughly corresponds to the frame 'Process start'

(11) What words refer to acting in an angry manner? make a scene, huff, have
a tantrum, throw a tantrum, outburst, shake your fist, stamp your foot, let
off steam, rant, rave, scowl,

(12) What words describe something said or done in an angry manner? angry,
furious, stormy, heated, furore, uproar, feelings run high,

(13) What words refer to trying to stop someone from feeling angry? pacify,
mollify,
This roughly corresponds to the frame 'Preventing' and 'Suasion'.

(14) What words refer to becoming less angry? cool off, cool down, settle
down, count to ten,
This roughly corresponds to the frame 'Change position of a scale'.

(15) What words describe something that is unlikely to cause someone to feel
angry? inoffensive, harmless, innocuous,

Ron Moe
SIL, Uganda


-----Original Message-----
From: Wayne Leman [mailto:wayne_leman at sil.org]
Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 2004 7:38 PM
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Lexicog] Frame Semantics


I have always been fascinated by the work of Charles Fillmore, from his
early work on case grammar  (remember that little gray anthology which
contained his article, "The Case for Case" ?!), to other important areas of
language research. Some of you may be aware that Fillmore continues his
semantic research now under the label of Frame Semantics. There is link to
Frame Semantics information in the Links section of our list website. (Click
on Links, then Homepages, then scroll down and click on FrameNet.)

For those of you on this list who have some familiarity with Frame
Semantics, would you be willing to share with list subscribers how FS, or
even the mindset of approaching lexicons from a lexically rich viewpoint
similar to FS, could help improve dictionaries produced around the world,
especially those which a number of us on the list are working on,
dictionaries for "minority languages"?

Wayne
-----
Wayne Leman
Cheyenne website: http://www.geocities.com/cheyenne_language

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