Cognitive Modeling and Verbal Semantics: A Representational Framework Based on UML

465 Pages·2004·127.286 MB·English

by  Andrea C. Schalley

Cognitive Modeling and Verbal Semantics
W
DE
G
Trends in Linguistics
Studies and Monographs 154
Editors
Walter Bisang
(main editor for this volume)
Hans Henrich Hock
Werner Winter
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York
Cognitive Modeling
and Verbal Semantics
A Representational Framework
Based on UML
by
Andrea C. Schalley
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York
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Printed in Germany.
To my parents
and to Alex
"The question is", said Alice, "whether you can
make words mean so many different things."
"The question is", said Humpty Dumpty, "which
is to be master - that's all."
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything;
so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again.
"They've a temper, some of them - particularly
verbs: they're the proudest - adjectives you can
do anything with, but not verbs - however, / can
manage the whole lot of them!"
(Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass)

Preface
Humpty Dumpty would be a very lucky and much sought-after guy if his
claim as expressed in the quote above also held from a linguistic seman-
tic point of view, namely, that he "can manage the whole lot" of the verbs.
Indeed, those linguists who are in search of a method for grasping and repre-
senting the semantics of verbs would keep demanding for his secret formula.
Unfortunately, there is no way to ask him whether his claim also covers this
linguistic desideratum, which has been in the focus of linguists for quite some
time and probably will remain. To date it is not possible to model the se-
mantics of verbs adequately. This work is another attempt to promote and
bring forward research in this area and to proceed towards the goal Humpty
Dumpty might have reached - although he most probably has not, in particu-
lar if we take his 'reliability' into account.
The approach to be introduced here results from a dissatisfaction with
the approaches that have been proposed to date. In particular, the aim was
to find an intuitive but nonetheless formal access to verbal semantics. Since
most approaches are either intuitive or formal, we will try to merge sev-
eral theoretical insights into one model, the Unified Eventity Representation
(UER). One obvious innovation is the introduction of object-orientation as
a new paradigm to linguistic semantics. Another is the proposed graphical
representation. It is well-known that grammarians work with tree-structures,
knowledge representation approaches use graphs, and modeling languages
in computer science employ richly structured graphical languages - such as
the Unified Modeling Language (UML) the UER is based on. Nevertheless,
though e.g., semantic maps and networks are applied in linguistic semantics,
it has not been tried to apply a graphical structure as rich as the UML to model
the internal structure of verbal semantics in linguistics. Specifically, we be-
lieve that an approach using a mixture of graphical elements as well as linear
textual constructs is very promising. Graphical elements in general express
structure, whereas the linear constructs mostly name contents, i.e., properties
and characteristics which are co-conceptualized with the graphical elements.
A representational framework usable on different levels of granularity, and
thus the possibility to refine one's model as far as is sensible in the scope of
investigation, will hopefully help progress in linguistic semantics.
viii Preface
The present investigation is my dissertation for the Ludwig-Maximilians-
Universität München, Germany, in a slightly revised format for book publica-
tion. Apart from a rework to improve readability, Section 7.5. and Chapter 8.
have been added to discuss the extension potential of the UER with regard
to compositional semantics, and to demonstrate the relevance of the UER for
linguistic theory building in an additional application of the framework.
First and foremost, I wish to thank my supervisors Dietmar Zaefferer and
Leila Behrens. Dietmar Zaefferer has my sincere gratitude for his constant
support during the last years, for his never-ending interest with which he
followed my research - and for his constructive remarks on both analysis
and underlying framework. I am grateful to Leila Behrens for her insight-
ful comments and for substantial discussions which helped to improve the
manuscript considerably. Many thanks are also directed to Alexander Knapp
for the indispensable, stimulating discussions from which I benefited greatly
while seeking the most sensible extension of the UML.
I very much appreciate the financial support of the Deutsche Forschungs-
gemeinschaft (DFG) I was happy to receive as a member of the graduate
program "Sprache, Information, Logik". Moreover, I would like to thank the
University of New England, Australia, for supporting the finalization of the
book. I am grateful to Dennis Alexander, Patric Bach, Brett Baker, Georg
Borner, Shirley Cooke, Simona Fina, Helen Fräser, Cliff Goddard, Catherine
Jukes, Eleni Kriempardis, Marilyn Miller, Veronica O'Reilly, Cindy Schnei-
der, Meike Tewes, and Simone Welten for proof-reading and commenting on
portions of the manuscript. All remaining errors are, of course, my own re-
sponsibility. Furthermore, I would like to thank Christiane Hofbauer for our
lively discussions and Julia Blaschke for her technical support.
Many, many thanks go to all my friends who supported me to stay the
course. However, I would like to pass my sincerest thanks to Alexander
Borkowski, to whom I am very much indebted. He not only lent me his ears
whenever there was a technical problem and proof-read the manuscript. In
addition, he discussed the UML and the UER with me in uncountable hours,
thereby helping me to improve many of the concepts presented in this work.
As my place of refuge, he always managed to get me back to work and en-
couraged me to go on when my motivation flagged. Last but not least, I would
like to thank my parents - for supporting me for such a long time and being
so patient with me.
Armidale, April 2004 Andrea C. Schalley
Contents
Preface vii
List of figures xiii
List of tables xviii
1. Introduction 1
2. Survey of research positions 10
2.1. Lexical semantics of verbs 11
2.1.1. Approaches to lexical semantics 12
2.1.2. Internal structures 16
2.1.2.1. Semantic roles and protoroles 16
2.1.2.2. Aktionsart and verb classification 22
2.1.3. Structural relations 26
2.1.3.1. Sense relations and lexical fields 27
2.1.3.2. Polysemy 31
2.2. Approaches to decompositional semantics 34
2.2.1. Generative Semantics 36
2.2.2. Jackendoff 's Conceptual Semantics 40
2.2.3. Fillmore's Frame Semantics 49
2.2.4. Wunderlich's Lexical Decomposition Grammar 55
2.2.5. Pustejovsky's Generative Lexicon 58
2.3. Semantic primitives and the Natural Semantic Metalanguage 68
3. Introducing the UER 75
3.1. A rigorous cognitive approach towards verbal semantics . . 75
3.2. Foundation of the UER 80
3.3. General characteristics 81
3.4. Diagram elements 83
4. Basic concepts of the UER 87
4.1. General extension mechanisms 88
4.1.1. Constraint 88
4.1.2. Comment 90
4.1.3. Property 90