(Words and their meaning)

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Close synonymy Small/little

I have little/*small money. This is Fred, my big/*large brother.

Animacy My neighbor admires my garden.

*My car admires my garden. Bill frightened his dog/*hacksaw.

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This is yellow. This is a pencil. ?This is a yellow pencil.

This is big. This is a whale. ?This is a big whale.

Lee kissed Kim passionately. ?Lee kissed Kim. ?Kim was kissed. ?Lee touched Kim with her lips. ?Lee married Kim. ?Kim kissed Lee. ?Lee kissed Kim many times.

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Fuzziness (rich, tall, green, clean) Typicality, prototypes Bird: robin vs. penguin

Lexicalization (snow) (glint, glimmer, glitter, gleam, glisten, glow, glare)

Inventories

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Culture-specific concepts L1 concept not lexicalized in L2 L1 word is semantically complex Different L1/L2 meaning distinctions L1/L2 lacks a hypernym/hyponym

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Ecology (flora, fauna: ‘tundra’, ‘taiga’) Material culture (food, clothes,

transport) Social culture (work, leisure) Organizations, customs, concepts

(political, religious, artistic) Gestures and habits

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The way basic underlying concepts are lexically realized in a language

Wide variation crosslinguistically English: motion (V) + path (PP) vs. Romance

languages He swam across the river.

Il traversa la fleuve à la nage L1 verb L2 prepositional phrase

L1 preposition L2 verb

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“flimped”: kissed someone who is allergic to John flimped garlic.

I am firm. You are obstinate. He is a pig-headed fool.

Fairer sex, female, broad Between jobs, out of work, on the dole

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Verb complement: infinitive -> noun I’m waiting for the postman to come. J’attends l’arrivée du facteur. A proposal to pay for the equipment Une proposition de paiement du matériel

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Non-compositional collocations Severe lexical constraints Vary crosslinguistically Off his rocker/#rocking chair Gnashing of teeth/#molars Shot herself in the foot/#toe

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Ways of representing concepts Basic entities, actions Relationships between them Compositionality of meaning

Some are very formal, some very informal

Various linguistic theories might involve different representations

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Measuring how near words, collocations, words, phrases, sentences, documents are in meaning

Classes, domains, hierarchical arrangement play crucial role

Function of constituents Assignment Verbs assign theta-roles to arguments Prepositions assign theta-roles to objects

Deep structure position: determines thematic role

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Role played by each NP in a sentence Agent: entity that performs an action Theme, Patient: entity that undergoes

an action Source, Goal, Location, Instrument Experiencer: perceiver of a cognitive

stimulus Stimulus: perceived cognitive stimulus

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The dog chased the cat up the hill.

Agent Theme Location <Ag,Th,Loc>

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Grammatical realization of semantic features

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Different types of lexical ambiguity Polysemy: 2+ related senses (bright, deposit) Homonymy: 2+ unrelated senses (bat, file)

Won’t address other kinds today Lexical ambiguity is rampant in English Average # senses: 4.74 for nouns, 8.63 for verbs Many words overlap both categories

Lexical ambiguity is: dangerous? helpful? immaterial? Contributes to language processing difficulty,

complexity Contributes to vagueness, underspecification

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Disambiguation: figuring out which sense is being used in a given instance/context

It’s clear humans need to do (some) WSD How much? How?

Do computers need to do (some) WSD? How much? How? Is it even possible?

Not an end in itself, but crucial to other tasks Many applications: MT, IR, content analysis,

grammatical analysis, speech, spelling/grammar checkers, etc.

What are the techniques? How (well) do they work? How can they be evaluated?

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Iraqi head seeks arms William Kelly was fed secretary Police begin push to run down

jaywalkers Dealers will hear car talk at noon Red tape holds up new bridges Kids make nutritious snacks Lansing residents can drop off trees Farmer Bill Dies in House

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Translation: SL/TL granularity mismatches wall Mauer/Wand; river fleuve/rivière

Erroneous translations Ladies may have a fit upstairs.

(in a Hong Kong tailor shop) Erroneous L2 usage

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Large-scale English coverage > 152,000 words Many, many lexical relations (paradigmatic,

syncategorematic, frequency-ranked) Subcategorization information Definitions, glosses, usage examples

Machine-readable, widely used in NLP Free, web-enabled, downloadable Developed by Princeton’s CogSci lab

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1 Something ----s 2 Somebody ----s 3 It is ----ing 4 Something is ----ing PP 5 Something ----s something Adjective/Noun 6 Something ----s Adjective/Noun 7 Somebody ----s Adjective 8 Somebody ----s something 9 Somebody ----s somebody 10 Something ----s somebody 11 Something ----s something 12 Something ----s to somebody 13 Somebody ----s on something 14 Somebody ----s somebody something 15 Somebody ----s something to somebody 16 Somebody ----s something from somebody 17 Somebody ----s somebody with something 18 Somebody ----s somebody of something 19 Somebody ----s something on somebody

20 Somebody ----s somebody PP 21 Somebody ----s something PP 22 Somebody ----s PP 23 Somebody's (body part) ----s 24 Somebody ----s somebody to INFINITIVE 25 Somebody ----s somebody INFINITIVE 26 Somebody ----s that CLAUSE 27 Somebody ----s to somebody 28 Somebody ----s to INFINITIVE 29 Somebody ----s whether INFINITIVE 30 Somebody ----s somebody into V-ing

something 31 Somebody ----s something with something 32 Somebody ----s INFINITIVE 33 Somebody ----s VERB-ing 34 It ----s that CLAUSE 35 Something ----s INFINITIVE

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Sample sentence: “Dogs chew leashes.”

dogs: N[pl], V[3sg] chew: N[sg], V[~3sg] leashes: N[pl], V[3sg]

dogs: n-animal, n-artifact, n-person, v-motion chew: n-act, v-consumpt, n-food leashes: n-artifact, v-contact, n-quantity

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(noun.Tops) noun.act noun.animal noun.artifact noun.attribute noun.body noun.cognition noun.communication noun.event noun.feeling noun.food noun.location noun.group

noun.motive noun.object noun.person noun.phenomenon noun.plant noun.possession noun.process noun.quantity noun.relation noun.shape noun.state noun.substance noun.time

15 Verb classes verb.body verb.change verb.cognition verb.communication verb.competition verb.consumption verb.contact verb.creation verb.emotion verb.motion verb.perception verb.possession verb.social verb.stative verb.weather

26 Noun classes

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The noun "dog" has 7 senses in WordNet. 1. dog, domestic animal, Canis familiaris -- ("the dog barked all night") 2. frump, dog -- (dull unattractive unpleasant female; "she's a real dog") 3. dog -- (informal term for a man; "you lucky dog") 4. cad, bounder, dog -- (someone morally reprehensible; "you dirty dog") 5. frank, frankfurter, hotdog, hot dog, dog, wiener, wienerwurst, weenie -- (a smooth-textured sausage of minced beef or pork usually smoked; often served on a bread roll) 6. pawl, detent, click, dog -- (a hinged catch that fits into a notch of a ratchet to move a wheel forward or prevent it from moving backward) 7. andiron, firedog, dog, dog-iron -- (metal supports for logs in a fireplace; "the andirons were too hot to touch")

The verb "dog" has 1 sense in WordNet.

1. chase, chase after, trail, tail, tag, give chase, dog, go after, track -- (go after with the intent to catch)

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... Sense 4

cad, bounder, blackguard, dog, hound, heel -- (someone who is morally reprehensible) => villain, scoundrel -- (a wicked or evil person; someone who does evil deliberately) => unwelcome person, persona non grata -- (a person who for some reason is not wanted or welcome) => person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, human, soul -- (a human being) => organism, being -- (a living thing that has (or can develop) the ability to act or function independently) => living thing, animate thing -- (a living (or once living) entity) => object, physical object -- (a tangible and visible entity; an entity that can cast a shadow) => entity -- (that which is perceived or known or inferred to have its own distinct existence (living or nonliving)) => causal agent, cause, causal agency -- (any entity that causes events to happen) => entity -- (that which is perceived or known or inferred to have its own distinct existence (living or nonliving)) Sense 5 frank, frankfurter, hotdog, hot dog, dog, wiener, wienerwurst, weenie -- (a smooth-textured sausage of minced beef or pork usually smoked; often served on a bread roll) => sausage -- (highly seasoned minced meat stuffed in casings) => meat -- (the flesh of animals (including fishes and birds and snails) used as food) => food -- (any solid substance (as opposed to liquid) that is used as a source of nourishment) => solid -- (a substance that is solid at room temperature and pressure) => substance, matter -- (that which has mass and occupies space) => entity -- (that which is perceived or known or inferred to have its own distinct existence (living or nonliving)) Sense 6 pawl, detent, click, dog -- (a hinged catch that fits into a notch of a ratchet to move a wheel forward or prevent it from moving backward) => catch, stop -- (a restraint that checks the motion of something) => restraint, constraint -- (a device that retards something's motion) => device -- (an instrumentality invented for a particular purpose) => instrumentality, instrumentation -- (an artifact (or system of artifacts) that is instrumental in accomplishing some end) => artifact, artefact -- (a man-made object taken as a whole) => object, physical object -- (a tangible and visible entity; an entity that can cast a shadow) => entity -- (that which is perceived or known or inferred to have its own distinct existence (living or nonliving)) => whole, whole thing, unit -- (an assemblage of parts that is regarded as a single entity) => object, physical object -- (a tangible and visible entity; an entity that can cast a shadow) => entity -- (that which is perceived or known or inferred to have its own distinct existence (living or nonliving))

...

WordNet online www.visualthesaurus.com Lots of others…

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WS annotation is an “expert” task, not a “natural” task for native speakers Inter-annotator agreement among experts: 90%

when limited to two senses; 70% when 8 or more senses involved ▪ Much less for untrained annotators

Trained lexicographers approach task differently than “normal” people (wider array of strategies)

Time-consuming, costly, fairly tedious

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stative verb:

social verb:

contact verb:

consumption verb:

competition verb:

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stative verb meanings: 1. function 3. effectuate, bring about 8. promote, benefit 9. serve, do, spend, pass 12. suffice, do, answer, serve, satisfy, fulfill

social verb meanings: 2. do duty in a specific function 4. be used by, as a utility 7. serve 10. attend to, assist 13. do military service

contact verb meanings: 11. serve, process, swear out 14. breed

consumption verb meanings: 5. help with food or drink 6. serve up, dish out, dish up

competition verb meaning: 15. put the ball into play

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stative verb meanings: 1. function: “...I think it will serve a purpose...” 3. effectuate, bring about: “...they had only served to confirm my faith...” 8. promote, benefit: “...the stickiness of the berry served to attach it to the tree...” 9. serve, do, spend, pass: “...I served a mission...” 12. suffice, do, answer, serve, satisfy, fulfill: “...it may serve other purposes...”

social verb meanings: 2. do duty in a specific function: “... serve as a visiting teacher...” 4. be used by, as a utility: “...this tabernacle has served us well...” 7. serve: “...the opportunity we have had of serving the Church...” 10. attend to, assist: “God help us all to serve one another...” 13. do military service: “We have young men serving in the military...”

contact verb meanings: 11. serve, process, swear out: “People go around serving notice...” 14. breed (N/A)

consumption verb meanings: 5. help with food or drink: “...we had been served our breakfast...” 6. serve up, dish out, dish up: “...the wild music that is served up...”

competition verb meaning: 15. put the ball into play: “...in tennis if we didn’t serve well...”

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GosFun

GConf BoM WSJ Xerox EUmtg GosPrn

JSPam