Re: synsem module ready

Hi everyone,


Here are some points for discussion that I've come up with after a wee bit
of discussion with Francesca. Firstly, I think that to avoid confusion, the
Class Frame should be renamed Syntactic Frame, since the term "Frame" is
used in a lot of different contexts -- and is to used to mean different
things even just within Computational Linguistics -- and so it would pay to
be about what it is that is being referred to in this case.

Also I feel it would be better to make a distinction between Syntactic and
Semantic arguments by making them two distinct classes. There are so many
instances where making this distinction is useful in lexical semantics that
I think it’s worth the extra complexity to include it in the definition of
Ontolex itself. For example by making this distinction we can easily
describe verbal alternations such as occur with verbs such as "to give"as
in "Alice gave the gift to Bob" and "Alice gave Bob the gift" where two
different kinds of syntactic structure seem to map to the same semantic
frame. Moreover, syntactic arguments are usually associated with syntactic
markers or morphological markings, which is not the case with semantic
arguments which are instead usually marked with different kinds of
properties, e.g., semantic roles such as Agent or Theme. Additionally in
morphologically rich languages like Latin there might not even be a fixed
syntactic order to the arguments of a verb, whereas in terms of a
predicative semantic representation the order of the arguments does matter.
In other words we tend to associate syntactic and semantic arguments with
different properties, properties which are usually included in
lexico-semantic representations of lexical entries. ( see also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_(linguistics)#Syntactic_vs._semantic_arguments)


Synsem/Example 4 is unclear/a bad example since the phrase "opening film"
can either be associated with a prepositional phrase argument headed by
"in" (as in "the opening film in our programme tonight is...") or "of" (as
in "the opening film of the Cannes film festival was terrible this year")
 -- or even no prepositional phrase argument (as in "the opening film is
terrible")  -- and so creating a lexical entry specifically based on
"opening film at" seems inefficient (why create a separate lexical entry
for each of the cases, and not associate an opening_film lexical entry with
a number of prefered prepositions?). Maybe it would be better to have a
simpler example of a relational noun like "brother" or "uncle" where the
noun is strongly associated with a certain preposition  (in these examples
the preposition  “of”) rather than a number of different prepositions, when
it is expressing a related ontological Object Property.

Also associating the concept Alma mater in Ex synsem/example5 with a
lexical entry other than the lexical entry "alma mater" comes across as a
little strange -- especially since it's not at all clear that the
expression alma mater always and unproblematically refers to an institution
that someone has graduated from (wikipedia, different dictionaries disagree
on this) rather than just attended.

Overall, these examples where an ontological concept is associated with a
related lexical entry not because there’s a straightforward
reference/extensional relation between them but because there is some kind
of lexical entailment relation involved (e.g., the ontological concept
refers to the result of the action described by a word/lexical entry) are
problematic because they tend to make the "meaning" of ontolex:reference a
bit obscure: do we use the reference relation to say that the extension of
the word is such and such, or that a certain expression is often used in a
language to refer to an important aspect of an event or a concept?
Also, I agree with John the gestalt stuff in the definition of Semantic
Frame is a bit puzzling.

Cheers,
Fahad

On 20 May 2015 at 16:57, John P. McCrae <jmccrae@cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I read through the spec and there are a few major issues I detected in the
> first couple of sections sections (ontolex + synsem)
>
> 1. The definition of 'other form' still says '[Other form] should be ....
> an abbreviation, short form or acronym'. This is incorrect and contradicts
> the definition of lexical entry. Can we add an example clarifying the
> representation of abbreviations?
> 2. ontolex/example10 now doesn't make any sense... 'bank' is just two
> words each with a different meaning. Can we change this to a word with
> genuine polysemy... I suggest 'troll' (1
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll>, 2
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll>).
> 3. ontolex/example17 doesn't really show a lot and for some reason refers
> to IATE for 'cat'!? (this is probably my fault...). Could we switch it to
> 'spouse'/'marry' showing that these two lexical entries have two different
> concepts but the same reference dbpedia:spouse
> 4. The definition of semantic frame is at best confusing, I really don't
> think we need to bring Gestalt Theory into this as well. My attempt would
> be:
>
> *Semantic Frames* are the meaning of a word (and hence are also lexical
> senses) but expressed by one or more ontological predicates and their
> arguments. This sense of the word can only be understood when all of its
> required arguments are realized.
>
> Similarly we need to change subframe to
>
> *Subframe *relates a complex semantic frame to frames for each of the
> individual ontological predicates that form the complex semantic frame.
>
> 5. synsem/example5 and example6 are essentially the same as example4 but
> they connect an eventive verb ('graduate' or 'die') with a consequential
> fact ('almaMater' or 'deathYear'). This is of questionable soundness
> although we have argued in papers it is valid when the event and the
> consequence are in a strict bijection... still, I would prefer to drop this
> for the spec as it adds a lot of unnecessary complexity.
>
> There are a lot of other minor issues I will change directly in the spec.
>
> Regards,
> John
>
> On Mon, May 18, 2015 at 10:41 AM, Manuel Fiorelli <
> manuel.fiorelli@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear Philipp, All
>>
>> you can find my comments on the synsem module below.
>>
>> In Example synsem/example2, the resource :own_frame_transitive is
>> wrongly written :own_form_transitive.  Additionally, there are two
>> usages of owl:subPropertyOf, which instead  should be rdfs:subPropertyOf.
>>
>> The class synsem:SemanticFrame is declared to be subclass of
>> ontolex:LexicalSense; however, in the picture representing the synsem
>> module, the arrow representing this axiom is oriented in the opposite
>> direction.
>>
>> In the paragraph "Semantic Frames", there is a table headed "Type",
>> "Predicate", "Example", whose first row contains *City(x)*, ?x rdf:type
>> ontology:Person: should it be ?x rdf:type dbpedia-owl:City?
>>
>> There is no example (just below the definition of synsem:isA)about the
>> representation of unary predicates. Nor is there any example about the
>> representation of individuals.
>>
>> The definitions of synsem:{subj|obj}OfProp use the following wording:
>> "...property represents the semantic argument with represents"
>>
>> I would avoid a sequence of two "represents". Moreover, I think that
>> "with" should be "that".
>>
>> In Example synsem/example3, there is again owl:subPropertyOf.
>>
>> Also, In Example synsem/example4, there is again owl:subPropertyOf.
>>
>> In the section "Complex Senses / Semantic Frames", there is the
>> definition of synsem:subframe, while in the figure there is the property
>> synsem:subsense.
>>
>> Just below Example synsem/example7, there is an example involving the
>> property father: the property should point to the child; however, the
>> name of the property suggests to me that the object is the father (just in
>> the same manner skos:broader points to the broader of a given concept).
>>
>> I think that Example synsem/example9  should be explained in more detail.
>>
>> I didn't find the definition of synsem:propertyDomain and
>> synsem:propertyRange; then, I realized that they were moved to the core
>> module. The diagram of the core module must be updated to include these
>> properties, as well as the diagram of the synsem module to remove them.
>>
>> I noticed that in the infobox providing the definition of propertyRange
>> and propertyDomain, the URI still uses the synsem namespace instead of the
>> core ontolex namespace.
>>
>> Finally, I noticed a typo in the definition of ontolex:LexicalEntry:
>> "The class lexical entry represents a unit of analysis of the lexicon
>> that consist of a set of forms that are grammatically ... "
>>
>> It should be "that consists" with an append "s".
>>
>> Best Regards
>>
>> Manuel Fiorelli
>>
>>
>> 2015-05-13 21:47 GMT+02:00 Philipp Cimiano <
>> cimiano@cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de>:
>>
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>>  I have been working on finalizing the synsem module, please check:
>>>
>>>
>>> https://www.w3.org/community/ontolex/wiki/Final_Model_Specification#Syntax_and_Semantics_.28synsem.29
>>>
>>> The next telco to discuss the synsem module will be on Friday the 22nd
>>> of Mai, 16:00 CET.
>>>
>>> Please send me any issues to discuss or comments on the synsem module by
>>> Thurday 21st of Mai at the very latest.
>>>
>>> Thanks and best regards,
>>>
>>> Philipp.
>>>
>>> --
>>> --
>>> Prof. Dr. Philipp Cimiano
>>> AG Semantic Computing
>>> Exzellenzcluster für Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC)
>>> Universität Bielefeld
>>>
>>> Tel: +49 521 106 12249
>>> Fax: +49 521 106 6560
>>> Mail: cimiano@cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de
>>>
>>> Office CITEC-2.307
>>> Universitätsstr. 21-25
>>> 33615 Bielefeld, NRW
>>> Germany
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>