[Lexicog] Re: FrameNet

[sr_shead]

Patrick,

I'm with you on your concern with FrameNet's frame-by-frame methodology.
Just thought I'd throw in one comment / question from your third
reservation:

> Thirdly, the relationship between semantic types and semantic roles
needs
> attention. To take an example:
>
> John treated Mary with antibiotics = [[Healer]] treated [[Patient]]
with
> [[Medication]]
> John treated the woodwork with creosote = [[Agent]] treated
[[Material]]
> with [[Alterant]]
>
> Does FN provide sufficient information for the interpretation that in
one
> case John is a Healer and in the other an Agent? The semantic type of
"John"
> is [[Human]]; there is nothing explicit in the text that says that he
is a
> Healer or an Agent. This is a semantic role assigned to John (semantic
type
> = Human) by the context. This is a systematic problem with FN, which
we are
> trying to address in the Verb Pattern Dictionary (watch this space).

Incidentially, FN does have the ability to tag FEs with semantic roles.

Nevertheless, I agree that you've identified a limitation of FN - but
I'm not sure that I'd call it a "systematic problem", since I don't
think FN has ever had that aim. That is, FN has always assumed an
intuitive understanding of semantic roles in context, and sought to use
this to produce (overly?) simple valence pattern descriptions - but it
doesn't aim to work the other way (i.e. giving enough information for
the *prediction* of senses).

I'm sure Fillmore et al would love to have that level of detail - but to
do that would probably mean integrating FN with something like Fillmore
& Kay's "Construction Grammar" (CxG). I know they have long wanted to be
able to bring them closer together, but haven't worked out how as yet.

Which brings me to my question: I'm very interested in your current
work, and I'm wondering how much it has in common with "constructionist"
approaches to grammar (like CxG, or perhaps Bill Croft's "Radical
Construction Grammar")?

Stephen Shead.

P.S. I'm something of a FN fan, though I think it has some big
deficiencies at the moment ... but I'm not from Berkeley, so no need for
the tin hat when I'm around :)


--- In lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com, "Patrick Hanks" <hanks at ...>
wrote:
>
> [from  lexicographylist]
>
> Rudy, thanks for the reminder. Fillmore's Frame Semantics is an
inspiration
> to all of us working in this area. It is certainly one of the most
important
> theoretical developments affecting lexicography.  It assigns semantic
roles
> to valences, and that is a major step forward.
>
> However, I do have reservations about FrameNet (the applied version of
Frame
> Semantics), and it does not quite do what you say it does. Some of my
> reservations are mentioned in an article that I wrote with James
> Pustejovsky, published last year in Revue francaise de la lingistique
> appliqu�e (10:2), in whihc we outline our own, as yet
unpublished, work.
>
> My main reservation is methodological. FrameNet proceeds frame by
frame, not
> word by word. This may seem a trivial point, but it isn't. Although
FrameNet
> uses empirical data, it does not use an empirical methodology. The
> methodology is that FrameNetters first think up a frame, then try to
think
> of all the words that might fit into that frame, then go and annotate
some
> of the corpus evidence for those words. This methodology creates two
> problems. Firstly, FN occasionally misses an important member of a
frame
> (because the annotators did not think of it). Secondly, in quite a
high
> proportion of cases FN currently does not cover all senses of a word
> (because "we haven't got to that Frame yet") and in some cases
("spoil", v.,
> is one example) all main major senses of the word and covers only
minor
> senses. So FN cannot be used for tasks like word sense disambiguation
until
> all frames are complete, and we don't know when that will be. Worse
still,
> there may be senses that will never fit into any frame.  Even when FN
is
> "complete", it will require a completely different process, with a
different
> methodology, to check that all normal senses of all common words have
been
> covered.
>
> A second reservation is that FN has no pre-defined inventory of
semantic
> tags. I believe they make them up as they go along. This may be a good
> thing, as it is at least empirically well founded, but there is a
danger of
> an uncontrolled explosion of tags, and, as far as I know, FN's
semantic tags
> are not systematically related to an ontology or inventory of lexical
items.
> So how is a user to know which words in a text realize which tags?
>
> Thirdly, the relationship between semantic types and semantic roles
needs
> attention. To take an example:
>
> John treated Mary with antibiotics = [[Healer]] treated [[Patient]]
with
> [[Medication]]
> John treated the woodwork with creosote = [[Agent]] treated
[[Material]]
> with [[Alterant]]
>
> Does FN provide sufficient information for the interpretation that in
one
> case John is a Healer and in the other an Agent? The semantic type of
"John"
> is [[Human]]; there is nothing explicit in the text that says that he
is a
> Healer or an Agent. This is a semantic role assigned to John (semantic
type
> = Human) by the context. This is a systematic problem with FN, which
we are
> trying to address in the Verb Pattern Dictionary (watch this space).
>
> These are a complex issues, and I won't go on. It was what I had in
mind
> when I said that Agent and Patient (in the grammatical sense) don't
get us
> very far.  But my quibbles should not detract from the fact that FS
and FN
> represent tremendous advances in our theoretical understanding of
semantics.
>
> I will now put my tin hat on (a British idiom dating from WW2, I
believe) --
> and await a counterblast from Berkeley.  :-)
>
> Patrick







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