English. The second edition of the PARSEME shared task was based on new guidelines and methodologies that particularly concerned the Italian language with the introduction of new categories of verbs not considered in the previous edition. This contribution presents the novelties introduced, the results obtained and the problems that emerged during the annotation process and concerning some categories of verbs.
The paper reports on some final results of the second edition of an annotation trial for verbal Multiword Expressions (VMWEs) carried out on the Italian language by the PARSEME-IT research group 1, which started within the broader European PARSEME project, the IC1207 COST action ended in April 20172.
The initial project is expanding in this second stage of its development, thanks to a wider network of research groups, working together as one 1https://sites.google.com/view/ parseme-it/home 2https://typo.uni-konstanz.de/parseme/ of the ACL Special Interest Group on the Lexicon, called SIGLEX-MWE.
In its first edition, the PARSEME shared task
released a corpus of 5.5 million tokens and 60,000
VMWE annotations in 18 different languages
which is distributed under different versions of the
Creative Commons license. To increase the
computational efficiency of Natural Language
Processing (NLP) applications, PARSEME focuses
on a special class of Multiword Expressions which
have been seldom modelled for their challenging
nature, such as verbal MWEs
Many of the features of this particular type of
MWE are considered to be difficult to cope with,
such as the discontinuity they present (turn it off)
the syntactic variations they license (the decision
was hard to take), the semantic variability
resulting both in literal and idiomatic readings (to
take the cake), or the syntactic ambiguity of many
forms (on is a preposition in to trust on
somebody, but a particle in to take on the task).
Moreover, these units have language-specific features,
and are generally modelled according to
descriptive categories developed by different traditions of
linguistic studies. The PARSEME research group
thus addresses also the creation of a multilingual
common platform for VMVEs using universal
terminology, guidelines and methodologies for the
identification of these units cross-linguistically.
Moreover, at the end of the first annotation trial a
shared task on automatic identification of VMWEs
was also carried out and has proved the reliability
and usefulness of the data collected so far, which
have been already presented and discussed
The paper illustrates the types of VMWEs used by the second PARSEME annotation trial more thoroughly. In Section 2 we provide a brief description of the second annotation trial of the PARSEME shared task together with the statistics. Then we present a new category of verbal MWEs, namely Inherently Clitic Verbs (Section 3) and in Section 4 two very productive categories in Italian (IRV and IDV). In Section 5, we discuss some borderline cases which posed some classification issues. Finally, we conclude and discuss future work. 2
This section focuses on the novelties which have been introduced in the guidelines and methodologies used for the second annotation trial in order to cover a wider range of VMWEs which were left apart in the first stage of the project. The improvements seem to be particularly valuable for the data collection carried out on the Italian language, because they address some peculiarities of the Italian language which were not considered in the first edition of the shared task but have been taken into account in the second edition, namely:
extremely rich and varied VMWE category in
Italian
Multi verb constructions (MVC), VMWEs composed by a sequence of two adjacent verbs (in a language-dependent order), a governing verb V gov (also called a vector verb) and a dependent verb V dep (also called a polar verb), like in lasciar perdere (to give up). 3Schneider, N., Green, M., 2015, Guidelines for Annotating Prepositional https://github.com/nschneid/nanni/wiki/PrepositionalVerb-Annotation-Guidelines
New Verbs,
The other classifying categories used are (a) light verb constructions (LVCs), e.g. fare una passeggiata (to have a walk), and (b) idioms (ID), e.g., tirare le cuoia (to kick the bucket), considered to be universal categories or categories which can be found in all languages participating in the task.
Other VMWEs are instead maintained as quasiuniversal categories, since their range of application seems to cover only some language groups or languages, but not all. They are (c) inherently reflexive verbs (IReflVs), and (d) verb-particle constructions (VPCs). The first group (IReflVs) allows annotators to account for verbs which are never used without a reflexive clitic pronoun, e.g., (Italian) suicidarsi (to suicide), or for those verbs whose meaning is significantly affected by the pronoun, e.g., (Italian) farsi (to take drugs) while the non-pronominal form, fare, means to make. Semantic aspects are also used to identify Verbparticle constructions (VPC) because their meaning is fully non-compositional, e.g., buttare giu` (to swallow), or only partly non-compositional, like in tirare avanti (to go on) since the preposition no longer owns its spatial meaning.
Table 1 presents the statistics of the various categories of VMWEs in the PARSEME-IT corpus 1.1. 3
Inherently Clitic Verbs (LS.ICV) represent a specific category for some Romance languages, and they are particularly frequent in the Italian language. It is often challenging to distinguish LS.ICV from Inherently Reflexive Verbs (IRV), particularly because some clitics may be ambiguous, like se/si which is a polyfunctional clitic pronoun and grammatical marker (and can have a reflexive, reciprocal, impersonal, passivizing, aspectual, and middle function). LS.ICVs together with IRVs are pronominal verbs. LS.ICV are formed by a full verb combined with one or more nonreflexive clitic that represents the pronominalization of one or more complement (CLI).
The following verbs should be annotated as LS.ICV:
The verb without the CLI does not exist, e.g., infischiarsene (do not worry about) vs *infischiare; tokens VMWEs IAV IRV 32613 500 44 106 360883 3254 414 942 The verb without the CLI does exist, but has a very different meaning as in prenderle (gl.: to take them, transl. to be beaten) vs prendere (to take) or prenderci (gl.: to take it, transl. to grasp the truth) vs prendere (to take); The verb has more than one CLI of which the second one is an invariable object complement, like in fregarsene (gl.: matter self ofit, transl. do not care about) or infischiarsene (do not worry about); The verb has two non-reflexive invariable CLIs, like in farcela (gl.: to make there it, transl. to succeed); The verb has a different meaning with respect to an intensive use of the same two nonreflexive invariable CLIs, like in andarsene (gl.: to go away self from-there, transl. to die) vs andarsene (to go away) or bersela (gl.: drink self it, transl. to believe) vs bersela (to drink it).
The annotation of LS.ICV was performed following a specific decision tree 4.
In the training corpus 20 different LS.ICV were annotated manually, such as farcela, rimetterci, fregarsene among others. 4
IRVs and VID represent very productive categories in Italian which pose some classifying issues due to their specific characteristics.
With reference to IRVs, the presence of the clitic pronoun si may generate ambiguity in the annotation process, as in Italian it refers to three different types of construction: i) reflexive, ii) impersonal, iii) inherent.
In order to distinguish these cases, we consider that in the reflexive construction, the clitic pronoun can be paraphrased by means of either an 4http://parsemefr.lif.univ-mrs.fr/ parseme-st-guidelines/1.1/?page=060_ Language-specific_tests/015_Inherently_ clitic_verbs__LB_LS.ICV_RB_ anaphoric expression which stands for se stesso (oneself) or a mutual expression which refers to gli uni e gli altri (these and those). Another relevant aspect to consider in the classification of IRVs is the presence of an implicit thematic role due to the fact that the action includes two different entities with different thematic properties but with the same reference, e.g., in guardarsi (to look at oneself) the clitic signals the presence of coreference between the first argument and the second one. Another source of mis-classification of IRVs is related to the presence of anticausative constructions. In these constructions, the clitic may represent an overt marker of reduced transitivity, , e.g., sedersi (to sit down).
In some cases, IRVs occur in idiomatic
construction and their meaning is affected by the presence
of new elements, such as in guardarsi bene da (to
be careful not to). Consequently the annotation of
such occurrences is subjected to the evaluation of
characteristics related to VID, as the low
variability, the presence of semantic non-compositional
meaning, and the literal-idiomatic ambiguity. In
the VID class, the non-compositionality
property is prototypical such as in battersi all’ultimo
sangue (lit. to fight till the last blood) which
means to fight to the last. Despite their
meaning is opaque, sometimes VID may have both a
literal and idiomatic meaning and the boundaries
between them are difficult to trace. For example,
avere gli occhi bendati (lit. to have the eyes
covered) has both a literal meaning and an idiomatic
one and in this latter case it should be translated
in English as to be blindfold. According to
Vietri (2014b), it is possible to classify
ordinaryverb VID, namely VID which present a
semantically full verb, on the basis of their definitional
structure, identified by means of the arguments
required by the operators. In the case of VID, the
operator consists of the verb and the fixed
element(s), while the argument may be the subject
and/or a free complement. VIDs can be formed
also by constructions based on the use of support
verbs, namely avere (to have), e.g., avere fegato
(lit. to have leaver, transl. to have guts) essere
(to be), e.g., essere a cavallo (to be golden) and
fare (to make), e.g., fare lo gnorri (to play fool).
The main difference between this class of VID and
the one formed by ordinary verbs is that support
verbs are semantically empty, and for this reason
this class of VID presents a high degree of lexical
and syntactic variability. This type of variability
is retrievable in aspectual variants, the production
of causative constructions, the possible deletion of
the support verb which causes complex
nominalizations
In this section we discuss the novelties concerning two categories used in the second edition of the PARSEME shared identification task of verbal MWEs (edition 1.1), namely LVC and IAV. As regards LVC, two new subcategories have been introduced in the second edition, LVC.full and LVC.cause, to account for a more fine-grained distinction between LVCs, where the verb is semantically totally bleached (e.g., to have the right), and those where the verb adds a causative meaning (and a new semantic role) to the noun (e.g., to grant the right). Therefore some new tests have been added to account for these subcategories, which heavily rely on the notion of semantic arguments.
In particular, constructions annotated as LVC.cause may involve: i) verbs that are typically used to express the cause of predicative nouns in general (e.g., cause, provoke), ii) verbs that are only used to express the cause of particular predicative nouns (e.g., grant in to grant a right).
IAV consists of a verb or VMWE and an idiomatic selected preposition or postposition that is either always required or, if absent, changes the meaning of the verb of the VMWE significantly. IAVs are verb+adposition combinations in which: i) the dependents of the adposition are not lexicalized, or ii) the adposition cannot be omitted without markedly altering the meaning of the verb. During the annotation trial, the IAV category has proved to be advantageous to cover the rich inventory of VMWEs in Italian, but some issues have also emerged, particularly with respect to the other class of LVC verbs, which also accounts for combinations of verbs plus prepositions. Prototypical examples of IAV collected so far include the following: 1.a Tendere a + N (to be inclined to something), base form tendere (to stretch), e.g., Maria tende alla depressione (Maria tends to be depressed); 1.b Tendere a + V (to be inclined to something), e.g., Maria tende a dimagrire (Maria tends to loose weight); 2. Puntare su + N (to bet), base form puntare (to stick), e.g., puntare su qualcuno/qualcosa.
These examples exhibit clear semantic changes from the non-adpositional base form of the verb; moreover, the preposition can not be omitted in questions, thus proving to be part of the verb: - Maria tende sempre ad esagerare. - A cosa tende, scusa?
Less prototypical IAV examples include verb
instances exhibiting semantic changes pivoted
by the arguments they combine with, like
andare in (both to go to and to become), or
sapere di (to smell and to know about). The
type of semantic interaction at stake, called
cocomposition in the Generative Lexicon5, is
realized when ”the complements carry information
which acts on the governing verb, essentially
taking the verb as argument and shifting its event
type”
5Co-composition has been called ‘accommodation in
more recent works
We also discussed two productive categories in Italian, namely IRV and VID, and analyzed LVC and IAV borderline cases together with observations on combinatorial phenomena that can be applied in order to annotate VMWE more effectively.
Future work includes a further linguistic analysis of borderline cases in order to contribute to the description of these phenomena.
This research has been partly supported by the European Regional Development Fund under the grant KK.01.1.1.01.0009 (DATACROSS). Authorship contribution is as follows: Johanna Monti is author of Sections 1, 2, and 3; Valeria Caruso of Section 5, and Maria Pia di Buono of Sections 4 and 6.