An Introduction to Semantic Parts of Speech Rajat Kumar Mohanty rkm[AT]cse[DOT]iitb[DOT]ac[DOT]in Centre for Indian Language Technology Department of Computer Science and Engineering Indian Institute of Technology Bombay Mumbai, India

Monday, May 09, 2005 CFILT Outline Conceptual Constituents Markedness Convention Place- and Path-function Conceptual Constituents of Motion Verbs Mapping a Thing into a Path Multiple Subcategorization The Case of climb Multiple Expressions of Path

Monday, May 09, 2005 CFILT Conceptual Constituents The semantic structure of a sentence is built up from a hierarchical arrangement of conceptual constituents. Each of the conceptual constituents belongs to a major ontological category or semantic part of speech. Semantic POS: Thing, Place, Path, Event, State, Manner, and Property Conceptual constituents are realized syntactically by means of major phrasal constituents (such as, NP, S, PP, AP, AdvP)

Monday, May 09, 2005 CFILT Example Bill ran into the room Syntactic Structure: [ S [ NP Bill] [ VP ran [ PP into [ NP the room]]] ] Conceptual Structure: Event GO ([ Thing Bill ], [ Path TO [ Place IN [ Thing the room] ] ])

Monday, May 09, 2005 CFILT Markedness Convention The correspondence of semantic to syntactic categories is governed by markedness convention. The unmarked realization of Thing is NP Place and Path is PP Property is AP Manner is AdvP Event and State is S However, the marked realizations also occur. The NP a bummer expresses Property The NP earthquake expresses an Event

Monday, May 09, 2005 CFILT Place- and Path-function PLACE PATH Place Path PLACE-FUNCTION ( [THING] ) (e.g., in the room) (e.g., to the station) TO FROM TOWARD VIA ( [THING] )

Monday, May 09, 2005 CFILT Motion Verbs Motion verbs map two arguments, a Thing and a Path, into an Event consisting of the Thing traversing the Path. (e.g., John ran into the room) run +V, -N [ _ PP j ] [ Event GO ([ Thing i ], [ Path j ] ] ]) Lexical entry: Motion verbs are represented generically by GO and differentiated from one another by various markers of manner.

Monday, May 09, 2005 CFILT Mapping a Thing into a Path The preposition into is a function that maps a thing – the reference object – into a Path. To satisfy the well-formedness conditions on the use of into, its sister phrase must be an NP (the syntactic condition) and must express a concept of a category Thing (the semantic condition). into P [ _ NP j ] [ Path TO [ Place IN [ Thing j ] ] ] Lexical entry:

Monday, May 09, 2005 CFILT Example John entered the room enter +V, -N [ _ NP j ] [ Event GO ([ Thing i ], [ Path TO [ Place IN [ Thing j ]]]) Lexical entry: The position and category of the variable in enter result in a syntactic realization as transitive verbs plus NP instead of verb plus PP.

Monday, May 09, 2005 CFILT Multiple Subcategorization The verb climb occurs in three subcategorization frames: [ __ ](e.g., She climbed) [ __ NP](e.g., She climbed the stairs) [ __ PP](e.g., She climbed through the window) Motion is carried out in a clambering fashion (the precise nature of the manner depends on the character of the direct object) The motion is understood as Upward Upward to the top (roughly) to the object NP Not necessarily upward (the PP frame is more distantly related)

Monday, May 09, 2005 CFILT The case of Climb Lexical entry: climb +V, -N b. [ _ PP j ] a. [ _ NP j ] [ Thing j ] ] Event GO [ Thing i ], [ Path UPWARD TO TOP OF VIA [ Manner CLAMBERING ] [ Path j ] Event GO [ Thing i ], [ Manner CLAMBERING ]

Monday, May 09, 2005 CFILT The case of Climb The subentries differ in how the Path is specified. The subentry (a) combines the transitive and intransitive subcategorization frames. The subentry (b) contains the PP frame. Something is climbing is an Event. The Event is constituted of motion (the semantic function GO) of a Theme (the argument i ) along a Path (the argument j ). The semantic structure of climb has two argument positions a Thing-variable embedded in the Path TO TOP OF j and a Path-variable that itself fills the Path argument of GO

Monday, May 09, 2005 CFILT Multiple Expressions of Path Examples John climbed the mountain up a narrow path John ran through the field into the woods. (Two PPs expresse part of the same Path) The PPs (up a narrow path and into the woods) are non-subcategorized PPs in V`, which are interpreted as extra constituents of the Path in Semantic Structure.

Monday, May 09, 2005 CFILT Sources & further Readings Jackendoff, R Multiple Subcategorization and The θ-criterion: The case of climb. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 3. Jackendoff, R Semantic Structures. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. Jackendoff, R Semantics and Cognition. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Monday, May 09, 2005 CFILT Thank You