LastAssignment

Final Assignment 

 

Send Greg and I your answers before class on the 25th.

Verbnet and Framenet classify words based on different principles, as seen in the Baker et al paper.  In preparation for this class, let’s see what insights each might give into verbs that allow the Conative alternation, e.g.,

Jack cut the cake

Jack cut at the cake

Here are four classes for Verbnet to drive the exploration.

cut-21.1 Cut, chip, clip, hack, hew, saw, scrape, slash, snip

swat-18.2  Bite, claw, paw, peck, punch, scratch, slug, stab, swat, swipe

spray-9.7-1 Spray, brush, drizzle

hit-18.1 bang, bash, batter, ...
 
Things to consider: 
 
Given the definitions and information provided in the Verbnet classes, is there any commonality (besides allowing the conative) that might allow one to suggest that these classes would belong in some abstract cluster that captures the semantic properties the license the conative construction?
 
Look up the words above in Framenet, and draw out clustering diagrams like in the Baker et al paper. What conclusions do you draw from this?
 
Is there anything in the Framenet definitions of the above words that identifies common semantic properties that enable the conative construction?  Might there be abstractions you could introduce that would capture these semantic properties.
 
Based on attempting these exercises, what’s missing?
 
Resources:
 
Unifier Verb Index - allows common access to Verbnet and Framenet: http://verbs.colorado.edu/verb-index/index.php
This seems to be down at the moment, so an alternative is based in Rochester that has the Verbnet info, but the Framenet links seem to be broken!  http://www.cs.rochester.edu/~gildea/Verbs/
 
The Framenet website: http://framenet.icsi.berkeley.edu/