Re: Action: agent vs participant vs object

On Mon, Oct 20, 2014 at 4:48 PM, ☮ elf Pavlik ☮ <
perpetual-tripper@wwelves.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I keep reviewing examples of Action subtypes, IMO some of them use
> agent, participant and object in possibly deceiving way.


That's probably my fault :( Sorry :( I'd be happy to clarify where needed.


> According to
> definitions:
>
> * agent - The direct performer or driver of the action (animate or
> inanimate). e.g. *John* wrote a book.
> * particpant - Other co-agents that participated in the action
> indirectly. e.g. John wrote a book with *Steve*.
> * object - The object upon the action is carried out, whose state is
> kept intact or changed. Also known as the semantic roles patient,
> affected or undergoer (which change their state) or theme (which
> doesn't). e.g. John read *a book*.


> I consider description of participant already including ambiguous
> example. If John and Steve wrote book together I would see both of them
> as agent in this action.
>

The original attempt for "participant" were for completed actions of the
style "X person did Y WITH Z", in that Z in "WITH Z" is the "participant"
(think facebook posts).

If John and Steve wrote the book, I think you'd be correct to say that both
are agents. I think calling one an agent (primary) and the second a
participant (secondary) is also semantically valid and correct.

Another way to approach this is to have an "author" property that is a
sub-property-of agent, to specialize the role.

So, I think "consumers" of these frames (e.g. google) should be able to
consume all of these combinations and understand the intent of the
"producer" in the variety of ways that this can be expressed.


> More examples follows
>
> * John and Steve agreed with a scholar paper claiming that P = NP!.
> * John and Steve disagreed with a scholar paper claiming that P = NP!,
> resulting in another scholar paper claiming that P is in fact !=       NP!.
> * John and Steve dislike an article.
> * John and Steve like an article.
> * John and Steve want an ipod.
> * John and Steve reviewed an article.
> * John travel from the US to Brazil with Steve.
> * John planned an exercise plan with Steve.
> * John ran 100 miles with Steve.
>
> All of those examples use agent: John, participant: Steve
>
> I think at least in some if not most of cases above *both* John and
> Steve could act as agent!


In a social stream, you'd occasionally want a main character associated
with the stream (e.g. John ran 100 miles, where John is the main character.
Steve was accompanying him, but that's secondary.).


> We could at least provide some examples with
> multiple agents and multiple objects. Otherwise one can get impression
> that agent has cardinality equal to one. For multiple agents we can just
> convert some of examples from list above.
>

Yep, I agree.

Can you come up with a few examples where you have a clear distinction
between primary agents and mere participants?


>
> For multiple objects I could write an example like:
> * John took photo of Jane, Steve and Alice
>

You mentioned there was confusion between "objects" too. Can you give me
more examples of where that appears?


>
> Does it sound reasonable?
>
>
It does. Thanks for pointing it out, I agree that this isn't clear at the
moment and more examples would help.