Conference article

Constructing a Multilingual Database of Verb Valence

Lars Hellan

Tore Bruland

Download article

Published in: Proceedings of the 19th Nordic Conference of Computational Linguistics (NODALIDA 2013); May 22-24; 2013; Oslo University; Norway. NEALT Proceedings Series 16

Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings 85:27, p. 301-310

NEALT Proceedings Series 16:27, p. 301-310

Show more +

Published: 2013-05-17

ISBN: 978-91-7519-589-6

ISSN: 1650-3686 (print), 1650-3740 (online)

Abstract

We show the initial stage of an incremental on-line multilingual valence pattern demo; presently populated with two languages; Norwegian and Ga. The procedure for establishing the Norwegian part of the valence database resides in reusing material available in the computational HPSGgrammar Norsource; which has a rich array of lexical information; in part developed from earlier existing lexical resources for Norwegian. The procedure used for Ga is based on a Toolbox lexicon for Ga; with a first stage of processing enabling its data to join the conversion strategy used for Norwegian. A common template is used for the valence information display; although neither source fills in the template completely; reflecting their original differences in content. Essential among these is the availability of example sentences illustrating each valence option for each verb – this is available for Ga; but not for Norwegian. The results are implemented but not yet widely published; serving at the moment partly for self-improvement through exhibiting weaknesses in the resources from which they were derived; and partly for development of the multilingual design.

Keywords

Valence; Syntactic Argument Structure; Computational Grammar; Norwegian; Ga; LKB; HPSG; Toolbox

References

Beermann; D. and Mihaylov; P. (2011). e-Research for Linguists. Proceedings of the 5th ACLHLT Workshop on Language Technology for Cultural Heritage; Social Sciences; and Humanities

Comrie; B. and Malchukov; A. (eds) (to appear) Handbook of Valency classes.

Copestake; A. (2002). Implementing Typed Feature Structure Grammars. CSLI.

Dakubu; M.E.K. (2009). Ga-English Dictionary with English-Ga Index. Accra: Black Mask Publishers.

Dakubu; M.E.K. (2010) Toolbox project Ga; University of Ghana.

Dakubu; M.E.K.; L. Hellan.; and D. Beermann. (2007). Verb Sequencing Constraints in Ga: Serial Verb Constructions and the Extended Verb Complex. In St. Müller (ed) Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. CSLI Publications; Stanford. (/http://csli-publications.stanford.edu/)

Fillmore; C. (2007): Valency issues in FrameNet. In: Herbst and Götz-Votteler (eds.).

Hellan; L. 2008. Enumerating Verb Constructions Cross-linguistically. COLING Workshop on Grammar Engineering Across frameworks. Manchester. http://www.aclweb.org/anthologynew/ W/W08/#1700

Hellan; L.; Johnsen; L. and A. Pitz. (1989) The TROLL Project. Ms.; NTNU.

Hellan; L. and M.E.K. Dakubu. 2009. A methodology for enhancing argument structure specification. Proceedings from the 4th Language Technology Conference (LTC 2009); Poznan.

Hellan; L. and Dakubu; M.E.K. (2010) Identifying Verb Constructions Cross-linguistically. SLAVOB series 6.3; Univ. of Ghana.

Herbst; T and K. Götz-Votteler (eds.) (2007): Valency: Theoretical; Descriptive and Cognitive Issues; Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Hirzel; H.. 2006. Deriving LKB lexicons from Toolbox. Talk given at Workshop on Grammar Engineering; NTNU; June 2006.

Hirzel; H. 2012. Converting a Toolbox lexical database to LKB format.tp://typecraft.org/tc2wiki/Converting_a_Toolbox_lexical_database_to_LKB_format.

Levin; B. (1993) English Verb Classes and Alternations. Univ. of Chicago Press; Chicago; IL.

Pollard; C. and Sag; I. (1994). Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Univ. of Chicago Press; Chicago; IL.

Citations in Crossref