=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1347/paper12
|storemode=property
|title=Activating attributes in frames
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1347/paper12.pdf
|volume=Vol-1347
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/networds/Fleischhauer15
}}
==Activating attributes in frames==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1347/paper12.pdf
Activating Attributes in Frames
Jens Fleischhauer
Department of General Linguistics
Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
Universitätsstrasse 1
40225 Düsseldorf, Germany
fleischhauer@phil.uni-duesseldorf.de
1 Introduction tion is more complex than its adjectival equiva-
lent. It is either possible to specify the tempo-
The general topic addressed in this paper is the ac- ral extent (duration or frequency) of an eventu-
tivation of scalar attributes in the context of degree ality or to specify the degree of a gradable prop-
gradation of non-scalar verbs. Non-scalar verbs erty associated with the verb. The first type is
such as German stinken ‘stink’ do not lexically en- called ‘extent gradation’, the second is called ‘de-
code a scale, meaning there is no scalar attribute gree gradation’ (Bolinger , 1972; Löbner , 2012;
in their lexical representation. Nevertheless such Fleischhauer , 2014). Two German examples of
verbs can be used in a degree context as in (1). In verbal degree gradation are shown in (2).
the sentence, the intensifier sehr ‘very’ specifies
the intensity of the dog’s smell. (2) a. Peter ist sehr gewachsen.
Peter is very grown
(1) Der Hund stinkt sehr.
‘Peter has grown a lot.’
the dog stinks very
b. Peter hat sehr geblutet.
The dog stinks very much.
Peter has very bled
If the verb does not lexicalize a scale, a scalar ‘Peter bled a lot.’
attribute has to be activated in the degree context;
otherwise the degree construction could not be in- In (2-a), the intensifier sehr specifies the degree
terpreted. Therefore, I will argue (i) that the scalar to which Peter increased in size; it is a vague,
attribute is retrieved from the conceptual knowl- context-dependent high degree (see Fleischhauer
edge associated with a meaning component speci- (2013) for a deepter discussion of degree grada-
fied in the verb, and (ii) that frames provide a suit- tion of change of state verbs). In (2-b) the intensi-
able means of representing the process of (scalar) fier indicates the quantity of emitted blood.
attribute activation. The aim of the paper is to il- There is a crucial difference between the verbs
lustrate how this process is constrained. wachsen ‘grow’ and bluten ‘bleed’ in (2); the for-
mer is lexically scalar, whereas the latter is not.
2 Verb gradation A verb is lexically scalar iff it expresses a scalar
predication in every context of use (see, among
Following Bierwisch ( 1989), gradation is a lin- others, Levin and Rappaport Hovav (2010) and
guistic process of comparing two degrees on a Fleischhauer and Gamerschlag ( 2014) on scalar
scale. Gradation is usually associated with ad- verbs). In (3-a) wachsen expresses a compari-
jectives, and languages like English and German son between the size of the child at the beginning
have special adjectival degree morphology such of the event and its size at the end of the event.
as comparative -er and superlative -est in En- Hence, it expresses a scalar predication although
glish. However, gradation is not restricted to ad- it is not modified by an intensifier.
jectives (Sapir , 1944; Bolinger , 1972); verbs and
nouns can also be graded (see e.g. Morzycki (3) a. Peter ist gewachsen.
(2009) on the gradation of nouns). Verbs and Peter is grown
nouns differ from adjectives in not having spe- ‘Peter has grown.’
cial degree morphemes (at least in English and b. Peter hat geblutet.
German). A further difference between the gra- Peter has bled
dation of adjectives and verbs is that verb grada- ‘Peter bled.’
Copyright c by the paper’s authors. Copying permitted for private and academic purposes.
In Vito Pirrelli, Claudia Marzi, Marcello Ferro (eds.): Word Structure and Word Usage. Proceedings of the NetWordS Final
Conference, Pisa, March 30-April 1, 2015, published at http://ceur-ws.org
58
The sentence in (3-b) does not compare the T
quantity of blood emitted by the boy to some other
quantity; hence, the verb is lexically non-scalar.
This means that only wachsen but not bluten lexi- Object Color
cally encodes a scale. COLOR : color
Although the verb bluten is gradable (2-b), it Bark (...) red green blue (...)
does not lexicalize a scale. The gradation scale
varies for different verbs: it is an intensity scale in Figure 2: Partial type signature.
(1) and a quantity scale in (2-b). Since the scale
varies for different verbs, it is not contributed by
a non-scalar attribute, such as COLOR.
the intensifier. Rather, a suitable gradation scale is
To restrict the admissible attributes for a frame
rather from conceptual knowledge.
and the admissible values for an attribute, types
3 Frames can be assigned to frames. Types are ordered
with regard to their specificity in a type signa-
Frames, in the sense of Barsalou ( 1992a; 1992b), ture (Carpenter , 1992), as shown in figure 2. The
are recursive attribute-value structures. A frame type signature defines ‘bark’ as a subtype of the
is a representation of a concept and represents the type ‘object’; ‘red’, ‘green’ and ‘blue’ are de-
referent of the concept in terms of its attributes, the fined as subtypes of ‘color’. The type signature
values of the attributes, the attributes of the values is enriched with appropriateness conditions (ACs)
and so on. One way of representing frames is by which serve two tasks: first, they restrict the set
using attribute-value matrixes (AVMs) like in fig- of appropriate attributes for frames to a certain
ure 1. The AVM in figure 1 shows a partial frame type. Second, ACs specify the appropriate values
for the concept ‘tree’ (based on Petersen and Os- for an attribute; it is required that all values of an
swald (2012)). A tree consists of a crown and a attribute are of a certain type (see Petersen (2007),
1
trunk, hence CROWN and TRUNK are attributes Petersen et al. (2008), Petersen and Gamerschlag
in the frame of ‘tree’. The value of the attribute (2014)). COLOR restricts its values to be of the
CROWN is the underspecified value or, in different type ‘color’ or one of its subtypes. Furthermore,
terms, the uninstantiated type ‘crown’. The value the attribute COLOR is an appropriate attribute for
of trunk is the uninstantiated type ‘trunk’ which ‘object’. Since ‘bark’ is a subtype of ‘object’, it
can be further characterized as having an attribute inherits this AC. Thus, objects of the type ‘bark’
BARK . The bark of the tree is characterized as hav- have a color but do not have, for example, a price,
ing a certain color. since the type signature does not define PRICE as
an appropriate attribute for ‘bark’.
tree
4 Frame analysis of degree gradation
CROWN crown
h i
In section 2, I suggested that the degree context
TRUNK trunk BARK bark COLOR color
activates the relevant gradation scale in the case
of lexically non-scalar verbs. This process is not
Figure 1: Partial frame for the concept ‘tree’.
arbitrary but restricted by the lexical semantics of
the verb. There are two reasons for this assump-
Following Löbner (1998; 2014) and Petersen
tion: First, each semantic class of gradable verbs
(2007), attributes are partial functions; they as-
is only related to a single gradation scale. Sec-
sign a unique value to their possessor argument.
ond, different semantic classes of verbs are related
The requirement of functionality provides a for-
to different gradation scales. As discussed above,
mal constraint on possible attributes. As attributes
verbs of substance emission such as bluten ‘bleed’
are functions, it is possible to distinguish scalar
are related to a quantity scale (2-b), but verbs of
and non-scalar attributes by looking at their do-
smell emission, like stinken ‘stink’ in (1), are re-
mains. If the values in the domain are linearly or-
lated to an intensity scale.
dered, the attribute is a scalar one (e.g. SIZE). If
In the following, the analysis concentrates on
there is no linear order of the domain’s values, it is
the verb bluten. The verb denotes a process of sub-
1
Attributes are written in small capitals. stance emission. Its single argument is the emit-
59
ter, the one who is emitting blood. The emit- only attribute that can be activated in a degree con-
tee, which is the emitted substance, is an im- text to provide a suitable gradation scale.
plicit semantic argument of the verb (Goldberg I propose the constraint in (4) as a restriction for
(2005) speaks of an incorporated theme argu- the activation of scalar attributes in the frames of
ment). A frame representation for bluten, cap- lexically non-scalar verbs:
turing the mentioned aspects, is given in figure 3.
The boxed numeral in the frame indicates structure (4) Only meaning components that are lexi-
sharing (Pollard and Sag , 1994) and indicates that cally specified in the verb license the ac-
the value of EMITTER is coextensive with a some tivation of scalar attributes.
other structure, the externally specified subject. In the frame for bluten (figure 3) only the emittee
is lexically specified as being blood. The emitter is
substance emission
not specified in the verb, rather it is introduced by
EMITTER 1
the subject argument and therefore does not give
EMITTEE blood access to specific conceptual knowledge.
Figure 3: Frame for the verbal concept bluten 5 Restricting the scalar attribute
‘bleed’.
An apparent problem is the claim that the frame
Degree gradation affects the quantity of the for bluten only contains one scalar attribute,
emitted blood; hence QUANTITY is an attribute namely QUANTITY. It is clearly the case that we
of the emittee. The frame representation for sehr cannot only speak of the quantity of blood but also
bluten ‘bleed a lot’ is shown in fig 4. The inten- of its temperature or pressure. TEMPERATURE as
sifier sehr activates the scalar attribute QUANTITY well as PRESSURE are scalar attributes too, so the
in the frame of bluten and specifies the value of question emerges why it is only QUANTITY but not
QUANTITY as ‘high’. TEMPERATURE or PRESSURE that is activated in a
degree context?
substance emission To tackle this problem one has to realize that
EMITTER 1 the gradable verbs of substance emission are not
h i
restricted to those that express an emission of a
EMITTEE blood QUANTITY high
liquid like blood. Other verbs of this class express
the emission of a solid like hair in (5).
Figure 4: Frame for sehr bluten ‘bleed a lot’.
(5) Die Katze hat sehr gehaart.
As QUANTITY is an attribute of ‘blood’, it is the cat has very shed
the object knowledge associated with ‘blood’ that ‘The cat lost many hairs.’
licenses its activation. A partial frame for ‘blood’
is given in figure 5. The type signature in figure 6 defines ‘liquid’
to be a supertype of ‘blood’ and ‘water’ and to be
blood a subtype of ‘substance’. ‘Solids’ are also a sub-
type of ‘substance’ and form the supertype of, for
CONSISTENCY liquid
COLOR red example, ‘hair’ and ‘scall’. The attributes shared
by liquids and solids are inherited from their com-
QUANTITY quantity
mon supertype, for example CONSISTENCY and
Figure 5: Partial frame for the concept Blut QUANTITY . But there are attributes which ‘hair’
‘blood’. and ‘blood’ do not share and these are inherited
from the more specific supertypes ‘liquids’ and
It is part of our knowledge of ‘blood’ that it has ‘solids’ respectively. For example, liquids do have
a certain consistency (‘liquid’), has a certain color a temperature and a pressure but we do not think
(‘red’) and is of a certain quantity. While the at- of solids in terms of the attributes PRESSURE and
tributes CONSISTENCY and COLOR have fixed val- TEMPERATURE. This does not result in the claim
ues for blood, the value of QUANTITY is depen- that solids do not have a temperature but I do not
dent on the possessor of the blood. In figure 5 the think that TEMPERATURE is an attribute in our ob-
only scalar attribute is QUANTITY, hence it is the ject knowledge of ‘hair’ or ‘scall’; so we do not
60
T tribute is activated from the conceptual knowledge
associated with a meaning component lexically
Substance specified in the verb. Furthermore, the gradable at-
CONSISTENCY : consistency tributes that can be activated are restricted to those
QUANTITY : quantity inherited from the most specific common super-
type. This ensures a homogeneous interpretation
of degree gradation of verbs of substance emis-
Liquids Solids sion, otherwise degree gradation of verbs (of sub-
CONSISTENCY : liquid CONSIST.: solid stance emission) would be totally idiosyncratic.
TEMPERATURE: temperature
Hair Scall Frames provide a suitable framework for the
PRESSURE: pressure
analysis of the sketched phenomenon as they al-
Blood Water low representing lexical knowledge and concep-
tual knowledge in the same representational for-
Figure 6: Partial type signature. mat. The frame analysis in this paper concentrates
on a single semantic verb class but it can easily be
extended to cover other classes of gradable verbs,
represents these concepts by using the attribute
for example verbs of smell/light/sound emission
TEMPERATURE.
or experiencer verbs, too. I propose that the gen-
As verbs of substance emission do not only ex- eral constraints formulated in (4) and (6) hold for
press the emission of liquids but of solids too, the these classes of verbs as well, the only difference
admissible scalar attributes that can be activated consists in the associated conceptual knowledge.
in a degree context are restricted to those inherited
The process of attribute activation is not re-
from the common supertype of liquids and solids,
stricted to scalar attributs in the context of ver-
which is ‘substance’. Since QUANTITY but not
bal degree gradation. A similar process occurs if
TEMPERATURE or PRESSURE is inherited from
verbs of sound emission are used for denoting mo-
‘substance’, it is only QUANTITY that can be ac-
tion events like in (7) (based on Kaufmann (1995,
tivated in the context of degree gradation. Beside
93)). In this construction, a motion frame is acti-
the constraint in (4) a further constraint restricting
vated which is licensed by the fact that the motion
the activation of scalar attributes is required:
of a motorbike produces a yowling sound. In this
(6) The activation of scalar attributes is re- case and in opposition to verbal degree gradation,
stricted to those attributes which are inher- knowledge of the subject referent is relevant too.
ited form the most specific common super-
type. (7) Das Motorrad jaulte über die
the motorbike yowled over the
The most specific common supertype for emit- Kreuzung.
table substances like ‘blood’ and ‘hair’ is ‘sub- crossing
stance’. Hence, (6) restricts the activation of scalar ‘The motorbike yowled over the crossing.’
attributes to those which are inherited from ‘sub-
stance’; those attributes inherited from a more spe- It is a promising task for the future to explore
cific supertype like ‘liquids’ cannot activated in a the process of attribute activation in more details
degree context. and to see how the activation of attributes from the
conceptual knowledge is constrained by lexical se-
6 Conclusion mantics and other factors.
In this paper, I have shown that lexically non-
scalar verbs can be graded by intensifiers like sehr. Acknowledgments
But this requires the activation of a suitable scalar
attribute, otherwise the degree construction could The paper is a result of my work in the Collabora-
not be interpreted. The process of attribute activa- tive Research Center “The Structure of Represen-
tion is not unconstrained, rather the lexical mean- tations in Language, Cognition, and Science” sup-
ing of the verb as well as conceptual knowledge ported by the German Science Foundation (DFG).
provide constraints on this process. The scalar at-
61
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