Generative Lexicon- Idea and Practicality

Debasri Chakrabarti
02408601

Guide: Prof.Milind S. Malshe

Co-Guide: Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharyya

1
 Overview

Introduction
Polysemy and the Logical Problem of Polysemy
Generative Lexicon Theory
Lexicon Building
Applications and Limitations of GLT
Conclusion

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 Introduction

Lexicon ideally collection of all words of a language

Information stored in a lexicon-
Phonetic information
pronunciation

Semantic information
meaning

Morphological information
transitivity and intransitivity (verbs) , count vs. mass (noun)

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 Lexicon (contd)

Example of eat in the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary

eat /i:t/ v (pt ate /et/; pp eaten /i:tn/):1. sth (up) to food into the mouth,chew and swallow it: he was too ill to eat

Pronunciation

Meaning
Morphological information

Lexical entry

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 Mental Lexicon
Mental Lexicon: information stored in the mind of a native speaker

Native speakers store information

Phonetic information
pronunciation

Semantic information
meaning

Morphological information
transitivity vs.intransitivity (verbs), count vs. mass (noun)

Additional information
use of a word in a new context, syntactic environment of a word, word-
formation rules 5
 Example of Mental Lexicon

Example of eat in a native speakers mind

Pronunciation: long /i:/ is used in eat
Grammatical information: past tense is ate /et/
Word-formation rules: /-s/ is the third person singular present tense marker as in
he eats
Meaning: 1. Take in solid food: she ate a banana
2. Take a meal: we did not eat until 10 P.M.
3. Worry or cause anxiety in a persistent way: whats eating you up.
Syntactic Information: eat needs an agent to perform the action.
the agent role is obligatory.

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 Lexicon in Computational Linguistics

Lexicon meant for Natural Language Processing (NLP) must have the
following properties:
Morphological information
Parts of speech information
Rules should be there to deal with both regular and irregular forms
e.g ate (past tense of eat)
men (plural of man)

Semantic information
Can handle lexical ambiguity

Syntactic information
Action verbs will always have an agent 7
 Polysemy and the Logical Problem of
Polysemy
Polysemy
An individual word can have indefinite number of subtle meaning
difference

Natural Languages are highly polysemous

This creates ambiguity

Weinreich distinguishes between two types of ambiguity

Contrastive ambiguity
Complementary polysemy

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 Polysemy and the Logical Problem of
Polysemy (contd)

Contrastive Ambiguity
A lexical item carries two distinct unrelated meanings
This is a case of homonymy
words spelled or pronounced in the same way but have different
meanings

Example:
bank a financial institution
bank place beside a body of water.

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 Polysemy and the Logical Problem of
Polysemy (contd)

Complementary Polysemy
Manifestation of the same basic sense
Denotes a relation among different senses
Example,
John crawled through the window.
The window is closed.

Sense 1. Apparatus
Sense 2. Physical Object

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 Sense Enumeration Lexicon (SEL)

Simplest model of lexical design to capture the logical polysemy.

Widely accepted in both computational and theoritical linguistics.

Direct approach to handle polysemy is to allow the lexicon to have

multiple listing of words, each annotated with a separate meaning
or lexical sense.

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 Sense Enumeration Lexicon (SEL)

Example of Contrastive Senses

bank1 bank2
CAT= count-noun CAT= count-noun
GENUS= financial-institution GENUS= shore

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 Sense Enumeration Lexicon (SEL)

Example of Complementary Polysemy

Window1 Window2
CAT= count-noun CAT= count-noun
GENUS= apparatus GENUS= artifact

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 Sense Enumeration Lexicon (SEL)

Possible Modification of Complementary Polysemy in

SEL

window

sense1 CAT= count-noun

GENUS= apparatus

sense2 CAT= count-noun

GENUS= artifact

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 Generative Lexicon Theory(GLT)

Major Problems for Lexical Semantics

to explain the polymorphic nature of language
to characterize the semanticality of natural language utterances
to capture the creative use of words in novel contexts
to develop a richer, co-compositional semantic representation

Generative Lexicon Theory

developed by James Pustejovsky
crucial aspect of GLT is the representation and treatment of polysemy
it examines the meaning of words to see the range of polysemy

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 Methodology of Generative Lexicon
Theory
Generative lexicon involves the following methodology
Argument Structure
True Arguments
Default Arguments
Shadow Arguments
True Adjuncts

Event Structure
Qualia Structure
Formal
Constitutive
Telic
Agentive 16
 Argument Structure
True Arguments: syntactically realized parameters of the
lexical item
John arrived late
Default Arguments: logically present in the expressions
but are not necessarily expressed syntactically.

John built the house out of bricks

True Adjuncts:
modify the logical expression
part of the situational interpretation
She drove down to New York on Tuesday. 17
 Argument Structure (contd)

Shadow Arguments: semantically incorporated in the lexical

item and are expressed by discourse specification and contextual
factors
Mary buttered her toast
hidden argument is the material being spread on the toast

these are not optional arguments but expressible only under specific
conditions

refer to the semantic content that is not necessarily expressed in syntax

Example: Mary buttered her toast with margarine

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 Event Structure
event type of a lexical item and a phrase
events can be sub-classified into at least three sorts: State, Process
and Transition
Event Structure of build as found in the following expressions
They are building a new house
The house was built by John

build

EVENTSTR=
E1= process
E2= state

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 Qualia Structure

gives a relational force for a lexical item

composed of four qualia roles

Formal: This qualia role distinguishes a lexical item within a
larger domain.
Constitutive: This is a relation between an object and its constituent
parts.
Telic: This specifies the purpose and function of a lexical item.
Agentive: This indicates the factors involved in the origin of a
lexical item.

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Qualia Structure (contd)

Qualia Structure for novel

novel
const = narrative
formal = book
telic = reading
Qualia agent = writing

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Lexical Conceptual Paradigm (LCP)

The term is used by Pustejovsky and Anick (1988)

Refers to the ability of a lexical item to cluster multiple senses

Example,
John crawled through the window.
The window is closed.
Resulting LCP
phys-obj.aperture-lcp = [phys-obj]
[aperture]

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 Generative Device
Type Coercion
a lexical item or phrase is coerced to a semantic interpretation by a
governing item in the phrase, without changing its syntactic type

Mary wants John to leave

Mary wants to leave
Mary wants the book
Function Application with Coercion
different complement type of the verb
different interpretations of the verb that arise for the different
complements

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 Generative Device
Selective Binding
a lexical item or a phrase operates specifically on the substructure of a phrase,
without changing the overall type in the composition
a good knife: a knife that cuts well

Co-composition
multiple elements within a phrase behave as functors, generating new non-
lexicalized senses for the words in composition
John baked the potato
John baked the cake

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 Lexicon Building

Building of WordNet
lexical database organised in terms of concept
each concept is related to each other in terms of various semantic
relations

Building of a Universal Word Dictionary

building a lexicon for Universal Networking Language
Universal Networking Language (UNL) is an electronic language
for computers to express and exchange all kinds of information

Creation of Verb hierarchy Tree

creating a verb knowledge base for the UNL system
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 Building of WordNet

Different semantic relations in WordNet

Synonymy
Antonymy
Hypernymy and Hyponymy
Meronymy and Holonymy
Entailment and Troponymy

Multiple Hypernymy in Euro WordNet

Disjunctive Hypernym
Conjunctive Hypernym
Nonexclusive Hypernym

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 Building of WordNet
Disjunctive Hypernym
these are incompatible types that never apply simultaneously
found among nouns that refer to the participant in an event
but do not restrict for the type of entity participating

threat
- Role- Agent threaten
- Has Hypernym person; disjunctive
- Has Hypernym thing; disjunctive
- Has Hypernym idea; disjunctive

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 Building of WordNet
Conjunctive Hypernym
these are compatible types that always apply simultaneously
found for verbs in which multiple aspects are combined.

Dutch Example
doodschoppen to kick to death
- Has Hypernym doden (to kill); conjunctive
- Has Hypernym schoppen (to kick); conjunctive

Similar Hindi example

huMkarnaa: Dranao ko ilae jaaor ka Sabd krnaa (to shout to

scare somebody)
- Has Hypernym Dranaa (to scare) conjunctive
- Has Hypernym icallaanaa (to shout) conjunctive 28
 Building of WordNet

Non-exclusive Hypernym
either both aspects may apply simultaneously or one of both may
apply

knife
- Has Hypernym weapon
- Has Hypernym cutlery

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 Building of a Universal Word
Dictionary
Construction of Universal Word (UW) in Universal Networking
Language (UNL)
UNL electronic language for computers to express and exchange all kinds of
information
UW character strings representing unique concept
eat (icl>consume) as in he is eating
eat (icl> damage) as in the house was eaten up by the heat
represented by an English word
captures all the meanings conveyed by that word
restrictions are attached to create unique sense
UNL Knowledge Base (KB) performs the task of defining all possible
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relationships between two UWs.
 How to create an UW

I. First a category is decided

a. nominal concept (icl> thing) is attached
e.g swallow(icl> thing)
b. verbal concept
(icl>do) concept of an event caused by something or someone
change (icl>do) as in I changed my mind.
(icl>occur) concept of an event that happens of its own accord
change (icl>occur) as in The weather will change.
(icl>be) concept of a state verb
know(icl>be) as in I know you.
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 How to create a UW(contd)

To handle the ambiguity of a UW

For a nominal concept, a subordinate category from the uw hierarchy
should be used rather than a thing.
Example: swallow (icl>bird) as in the swallow is singing.
swallow(icl>action) as in he took the drink at [in] one swallow.
swallow(icl>quantity) as in take a swallow of water.

For a verbal concept possible case relations are attached.

case relations are like obj>thing, obj>person, gol>thing
Example: spring(icl>occur(obj>liquid)): expresses gushing out as in to spring out
spring(icl>do(gol>place)): expresses jumping up as in to spring up
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 Creation of a verb hierarchal tree
Creation of the Verb knowledge base
Following :
1.Beth Levins methodology of verb alternation
example, a. Bill sold a car.
b. Bill sold Tom a car.

2. Hypernymy relation of English Wordnet

Hypernym denotes superset of a concept
example, animal

Hypernym
cat 33
 Creation of a verb hierarchal tree
contd

Beth Levin gives the syntactic information.

Hypernymy gives the semantic information.

The classification is in the following manner:

"do(agt>thing,obj>thing {,gol>thing,src>thing,icl>do})"

"argue({icl>do(}agt>thing,obj>thing,ptn>thing{)})"

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Creation of a verb hierarchal tree
contd

Format of the entry:

1Tab "attack({icl>do(}agt>thing,obj>thing{)})"; Most wild animals
won't attack humans unless they are provoked. /Army forces have been
attacking (the town) since dawn with mortar and shell fire. / Napoleon
attacked Russia in 1812 and was defeated and forced to retreat. (to
make an attack on sb/sth)
2Tab Tab"assault(icl>attack(agt>thing,obj>thing,man>emotionally))"
Nightmares assaulted him regularly.(to attack sb emotionally)
2Tab Tab"assault(icl>attack(agt>thing,obj>thing,man>physically))"
;He got two year's imprisonment for assaulting a police officer.[Vn](to
attack sb physicaly and violently, esp when this is a crime)

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 Application of GLT

Formal role is similar with the hypernymy relation

Constitutive role is similar with the meronymy
relation
Telic role is similar with the functional link given
between a Noun and a Verb in the Hindi WordNet
LCP is used in the multi hypernymy process
Event structure is specified by the ontology nodes in
the Hindi WordNet

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 Application of GLT

English Wordnet (1.7.1) gives 63 senses for the verb sense of break

interrupt, break 1-- (end prematurely; break a lucky streak)

break, break off, discontinue, stop 10-- (prevent completion; stop the project; break the
silence)

break, break away 18-- (interrupt a continued activity; She had broken with the traditional
patterns)

break 31-- (stop or interrupt; He broke the engagement; We had to break our plans for a
trip to China)

separate, part, split up, split, break, break up 33-- (discontinue an association or
relation; go different ways; The business partners broke over a tax question; The couple
separated after 25 years of marriage; My friend and I split up) 37
 Application of GLT

Merging of senses using GLT

Break

EVENTSTR E: event

QUALIA FORMAL: interruption

AGENTIVE: break_act

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 Limitations Of GLT

Attempts to distinguish between polysemy and

accidental homonymy
Example of bake
baked a cake (creativity)
baked a potato (change of state)

Pustejovskys suggestion
cake-artifact
potato-nat obj

Problem: how to deal with artifacts like knife, car?

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 Conclusion

Generative mechanisms fail to predict polysemy or

generate polysemous sense

Generative mechanisms along with ontology can be a
powerful device
This implies the building of a rich ontology

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