Semantic Opposition and WordNet

  • Authors:
  • Sandiway Fong

  • Affiliations:
  • NEC Laboratories America, 4 Independence Way, Princeton, NJ 08540, U.S.A./ Departments of Linguistics and Computer Science, University of Arizona, P.O. Box 210028, Tucson, AZ 85721, U.S.A. E-mai ...

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Logic, Language and Information
  • Year:
  • 2004

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

We consider the problem of semantic opposition; in particular, theproblem of determining adjective-verb opposition for transitive changeof state verbs and adjectivally modified grammatical objects. Semanticopposition problems of this type are a sub-case of the classic FrameProblem; the well-known problem of knowing what is preserved orchanged in the world as a result of some action or event. Bydefinition, grammatical objects of change of state verbs undergomodification. In cases where the object is adjectivally modified, theproblem reduces to determining whether the property denoted by theadjective still holds true after the event denoted by the verb. Inthis paper, we evaluate the efficacy of WordNet, a network of conceptsorganized around linguistically relevant semantic relations includingantonymy, for this task. Test examples are drawn from the linguisticliterature. Results are analyzed in detail with a view towardsproviding feedback on the concept of a network as an appropriate modelof semantic relations for problems in semantic inference.