Comments to Karin Kipper

Christiane Fellbaum

Princeton University and

Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der
Wissenschaften
 Some Questions for Discussion
• Semantic roles
• Syntactic frames
• Selectional restrictions
 Semantic Roles
• Inventory: fine-grainedness vs.
manageability
• Checklist of features (Dowty)?
 Theme vs. Patient
• „P undergoes change“
• Moved entity is not changed? (put verbs)
• „hit“ entails a change?
 Causer vs. Agent
• Agent can be involuntary, or Cause can be
animate: I hit my knee against the table and
knocked over the cup
 Syntactic Frames
• Strict subcategorization or optional
arguments and adjunct? E.g., cite does not
require a Recipient, is not always a Transfer
event
• „Generic“ arguments?
• Syntax-semantics relation: how regular?

(What is a declarative frame?)

 Syntax/Semantics
• Fine-grainedness of distinctions
Put-class is not homogeneous:
{Arrange/*lodge/*mount} X into Y, where Y
is a resultant configuration
(beware polysemy of preposition!)

Arrange the oranges into a pyramid

 Alternations
• Should causative break be considered a
different sense than inchoative break?

Note that WN´s hierarchical structure forces a

sense distinction—two different
superordinates; senses are linked
 Selectional Restrictions
• Class-based? Semantic sets?
• Selectional preferences (soft)?
 Other Questions
• How were sense inventories compared?
• What is relation of classes to subclasses—
what are hierarchical relations based on?
• Why use WordNet 1.5--it‘s 10 years old
• Why are idioms, phrasal verbs a problem?

• Were large clusters not predictive because of

underspecification of Arg1, Arg2,...?