Chinese FrameNet Data in Semantic Web Language

Liping YOU, Tao LIU Kaiying LIUCollege of Management, Shanxi Univer- School of Computer and Information

sity, Taiyuan, China, 030006 Technology, Shanxi University Tai-yoliping@163.com yuan, China, 030006

liukaiying99@vip.163.com

Abstract lexicons of the Chinese and their English equiva-lents. However, it's a long way for Chinese lexicalresources to be sufficient for application.

lexical res eforaN P e c n a The Chinese FrameNet Project (Liping YOU,lexical reorc orCins,a2005) is creating an lexical resource for Chinese,principles of Frame Semantics and sup-.. based on the principles of Frame Semantics andported by corpus evidence. The resultingp pdartased maiy conpusevistsce.ofd esr tions of supported by corpus evidence. The CFN database

now contains information about more than 1760the semantic frames underlying the mean- lexical units (senses of words) in more than 130ings of the words described and a repre-sentative collection of annotated corpus at- ftestations which jointly exemplify the link- 10,000 sentences. This paper will explain the the-

ory behind CFN briefly discuss the annotationing between FEs and their syntactic realiza- yprocess, and then describe how the CFN data cantions.thispraper poidesaWL reprentation be represented in some Semantic Web languages,forguthe framdannotatedsentenesin OtLoy so that it will become a resource for the SemanticLanguage and annotated sentences in XML, Web.which can represent our ontologies and tomake CFN information machine readable 2 Frame Semantics and the Chineseand understandable. FrameNet Product

1 Introduction 2.1 Frame Semantic Background

The development of lexical semantic resources is The basic assumption of Frame Semantics (Fill-widely recognized as a prerequisite to the progress more Charles J., 1976, 1982) as it applies to thein natural language understanding. Sophisticated description of lexical meanings is that each wordefforts in this direction include WordNet, MindNet (in a given meaning) evokes a particular frame andand FrameNet (http://framenet.icsi.berkeley.edu/), possibly profiles some element or aspect of thatall of which are English lexical semantic resources. frame. An "evoked" frame is the structure ofIn China, some researchers put effort into building knowledge required for the understanding of aChinese lexical semantic resources: the Chinese given lexical or phrasal item; a "profiled" entity isConcept Dictionary (CCD) (Yu Jiangsheng, 2002), the component of a frame that integrates directlydeveloped by Peking University, Beijing, is a Chi- into the semantic structure of the surrounding textnese-English bilingual concept dictionary with the or sentence. The frames in question can be sim-framework of WordNet and HowNet ple small static scenes or states of affairs, simple(http://www.keenage.com/), developed by Zhen- pafferns of contrast, relations between entities anddong Dong, is an on-line common-sense knowl- the roles they serve, or possibly quite complexedge base unveiling inter-conceptual relations and event types which we can call scenarios thatinter-attribute relations of concepts as connoting in

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provide the background for words that profile one a text in which the words occur) invokes the frame.or more of their phases or participants. The job of Chinese FrameNet (CFN) is to pro-

The notion of frame can be exemplified with the duce frame-semantic descriptions of several thou-Commercial Transaction Frame, whose elements, sand Chinese lexical items and to document fromFrame Elements (FEs), include a buyer, a seller, attested instances of contemporary Chinese thegoods, and money. (Note that these FEs have been manner in which FEs are grammatically instanti-designated in terms of situational roles; this con- ated in Chinese sentences and to organize and ex-trasts with the notion of semantic roles as articu- hibit the results of such findings in a systematiclated in case grammar.) Among the large set of way. The CFN database can be seen both as a dic-semantically related verbs linked to this frame are tionary and a thesaurus. It is a dictionary in thatJiQ(buy), 4(sell), J:fj(pay), 4i (spend), and & each lexical unit is provided with (1) the name of,AA$(charge), each of which indexes or evokes dif- its frame, (2) a definition, (3) a valence descriptionferent aspects of the frame. The verb JiQ'(buy) fo- which summarizes the attested combinatorial pos-cuses on the buyer and the goods, backgrounding sibilities, and (4) access to annotated examples il-the seller and the money; 4(sell) focuses on the lustrating each syntactic pattern found in the cor-seller and the goods, backgrounding the buyer and pus and the kinds of semantic information in-

stanced with such patterns. It is a thesaurus in that,themoney;and

p fcssothe'bue the by being linked to frames, each word is directlymoney, and the seller, backgrounding the goods; connected with other words in its frame(s), andand so on. The idea is that knowing the meaning of further extensions are provided by working out theany one of these verbs requires knowing what ways in which a word's basic frames are connectedtakes place in a commercial transaction and know- with other frames through relations of inheritanceing the meaning of any one verb means, in some (possibly multiple inheritance) and composition.sense, knowing the meaning of all of them. Theknowledge and experience structured by the Com- 2.2 An Example Frame: tFS,5U (Percep-mercial Transaction Frame provide the background tion_active)and motivation for the categories represented by For instance to understand the Chinese verbs be-the words. The words, that is, the linguistic mate-rial, evoke the frame (in the mind of a low, one will evoke the same frame, 0it-!;9speaker/hearer); the interpreter (of an utterance or (Perception_active), in his mind.

Core Frame Elements+J4T35 pn RBody_part identifies the part of the body used as a sensory organ(Body-part) of the Perceiver_agentive.tS AHI Direction is used for all path-like expressions that describe how(Direction) the perceiver's attention is directed during the act of percep-

tion.The Perceiver_agentive performs some action in order to have a

(Perceiveragentive) perceptual experience.f)lI, t Phenomenon indicates the entity or phenomenon to which the Per-(Phenomenon) ceiveragentive directs his or her attention in order to have a

perceptual experience.Non-core Frame Elements

iiIt (Manner) Manner expressions describe properties of active perception.t7SX (Means) The Means indicates the tool or method the Perceiver_agentive is

using to actively perceive the Phenomenon.tIH] (Place) The general location within which the act of perception takes

place.HflJ (Purpose) Some action that the Perceiver_agentive is trying to accomplish

_____________________by directing their own attention.u7trH (Time) When the activity of attempting to perceive occurs.

Table 1. The FEs of the Perception_active frame

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k!#v (to listen), Wv (to look), 2v (to taste), /IVv (to need have any relation to the other. (In this respect,smell),I v (to smell), kW#v (to have a listen), /I/Iv it contrasts with inheritance.) For example, in a(to have a smell), v (to have a look), v (to have perceiving process (the Perception frame), first,a taste), #Y V(to overlook), /4v (to watch), itv something acts on one's sense organ with sound or(to peep), AJUkJv (to peep), /.Jv (to peep), f{ v (to light (the Make_noise frame and the Loca-watch), '7iYjtv (to watch), l/,'.k!v (to eavesdrop), tion_of light frame). Then he becomes aware it

(the Becoming_aware frame) and differentiate itAll the above words involve events that perceiv- from other entities in his memory (the Differentia-

ers intentionally direct their attention to some en- tion frame). At last, he construes it as belonging totity or phenomenon in order to have a perceptual a certain Category (Categorization). Thus, the Per-experience. So they could be categorized in one ception frame has subframes of Location of light,frame, called bI ! 9T (Perception-active). The Make_noise, Becoming_aware, Differentiation andFEs are defined like Table 1. Categorization.

Core FE is one that instantiates a conceptually 2.4 Annotated sentencesnecessary component of a frame, while making theframe unique and different from other frames. FEs Sentences are marked up to exemplify the semanticthat do not introduce additional, independent or and syntactic properties of the lexical items. Fordistinct events from the main reported event are example, when given the target verb W (to look),characterized as non-core FEs. Non-core FEs mark which belongs to the Perception active frame, wesuch notions as Time, Place, Manner, Means, De- select the sentence gKiii1 ±1JkkLtgree, etc.... 7y(Now the mayor Zhan Lichang is reading brief-2.3 Relations between Frames and FEs ing news and writing instructions.), and mark the

FEs and the phrase types and grammatical func-Inheritance Frame inheritance is an IS-A relation. tions of the constituents instantiating them. TheIf frame B inherits from frame A, then B elaborates resulting annotations can be displayed in a brack-A, and is a subtype of A. Furthermore, all the FEs eted notation like this:of A are inherited by B. They may appear in Bwith exactly the same names and semantic types, <Perceiver_agentive-np-subj liT Y SKa> <Time-or they may be subtypes (elaborations) of the FEs dp-adva -iLy> <tgt R> <Phenomenon-np-obj nV1i>in A. The picture is further complicated by situa- 4AT {LAtions of multiple inheritance; an FE in one framemay inherit from FEs in two parent frames, com- 3 An example Frame representation inbining their semantics. For example, the sentence OWL1IVV7+XgJJAZ4ffY/ N (The scientists are

observing nuclear weapons) belongs to the b The World Wide Web (WWW) contains a largeob (Percionu wactiv )fr e,owic inther from amount of information which is expanding at aboth!PU 9~u~(Perception')and rapid rate. Most of that information is currentlyboth ;Ulk (Perception) and If> %1`1IT (Inten- being represented using the Hypertext Markuptionally_act). Thus, #4tAY7 (the scientists) is Language (HTML), which is designed to allowboth a Perceiver by virtue of inheritance from Per- web developers to display information in a wayception and a Agent by virtue of inheritance from that is accessible to humans for viewing via webIntentionally_act. browsers. While HTML allows us to visualize the

Subframes The other type of relation between information on the web, it doesn't provide muchframes which is currently represented in the CFN capability to describe the information in ways thatdatabase is between a complex frame and several facilitate the use of software programs to find orsimpler frames (subframes) which constitute it. We interpret it. The World Wide Web Consortiumcall this frame composition, by which we mean the (W3C) has developed the Extensible Markup Lan-situation in which a complex frame is made up of guage (XML) which allows information to be moreparts which are also frames. In such cases, FEs of accurately described using tags. The use of XMLthe complex frame may be identified (mapped) to to provide metadata markup makes the meaning ofthe FEs of the subparts, although not all FEs of one the word unambiguous. However, XML has a lim-

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ited capability to describe the relationships (sche- lexical units in both of the frame database and themas or ontologies) with respect to objects. The use lexical database, so they can refer to each other.of ontologies provides a very powerful way to de- The most general object of interest is a frame. We de-scribe objects and their relationships to other ob- fine the FRAME class as a owl:unionOf a BACK-jects. OWL Web Ontology Language can be used GROUNDFRAME class (such as Perception frame) andto explicitly represent the meaning of terms in vo- a LEXICALFRAME class (such as the Percep-cabularies and the relationships between those tion active frame). We then define a bunch of book-

keeping subclasses, properties and restrictions on theterms (DeborahOWL. hasMcGuness fransvn Hr- FRAME class. An example of the name property ismelen, 2004). OWL has more facilities for ex- shown below.pressing meaning and semantics than XML, RDF, <owl:class rdf:ID="frame">and RDF-S, and thus OWL goes beyond these lan- <rdfs:comment>the most generalguages in its ability to represent machine interpret- class</rdfs:comment>able content on the Web. OWL is a revision of the <owl:unionof rdf:parsetype="collection">DAML+OIL web ontology language. We are try- <owl:class rdf:about="backgroundframe"/>ing to translate the CFN data to semantic web lan- <owl:class rdf:about="lexicalframe"/>guage, so that it could be machine readable and </owl:unionof>

. . . ^. ^ ............... ~~<rdfs:subclassoP>understandable. We expect it to become useful for <owf:estriction>various applications on the Semantic Web. <owl:Restrdction>

Our Frame declaration begins with an RDF start <owl:maxCardinalitytag including several namespace declarations of the rdf:datatype="&xsd;nonNegativeInteger">1</owl:maform: xCardinality>

1 <?xml version=" 1.0" encoding="gb2312"?> </owl:Restriction>2 <!DOCTYPE rdf:RDF[<!ENTITY xsd ......

"http://www.w3c.org/2001/XMLSchema#"> </owl:class>3 <!ENTITY rdfs "www.w3c.org/2000/01/rdf- We define the FE class as a subclass of theschema" > frame and it has its own subclasses: core FE and4 <!ENTITY dc non-core FE, as well as their restrictions."http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">]> <owl:class rdf.ID="FE">5 <rdf:RDF xmlns ="http://www.CFN.org/Frame/" <rdfs :subclassof rdf:ID="#frame"/>6 xmlns :frame="http://www.CFN.org/Frame/" <rdfs subclassof>7 xml:base="http://www.CFN.org/Frame/" <owl:Restriction>8 <owl:onPropertyxmlns:words="http://www.CFN.org/Frame/words" rdfresource="#hasfullname">9 xmlns:owl="http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#" <owl:cardinality10 xmlns:rdf="www.w3c.org/199/02/22-rdf-syntax- rdf: datatype="&xsd;nonNegativeInteger">0</o

wl:cardinality>11 xmlns:rdfs= "http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf- </owl:Restriction>schema#"> </rdfs:subclassof>Line 1 is the XML version declarations of this <rdfs:subclassof>

document, line 2-4 describe the document's type, <owl:Restriction>which is the namespace of xsd, rdf and dc, and <owl:onPropertyline 5-11 declare the name space of the terms in rdf:resource="#hasabbmame"/>this document.Then we define the URI references <owl:cardinalityas below: rdf:datatype="&xsd;nonNegativeInteger"> 1</o

12 <owl:Ontology rdf:about=""> wl:cardinality>13 <rdfs:comment>Frame Ontology Of </owl:Restriction>CFN</rdfs:comment> </rdfs:subclassof>14 <owl:imports <rdfs:subclassof>rdf:resource="http://www.CFN.org/Frame/words"7> <owl:restriction>15 <rdfs:label>Frame Ontology</rdfs:label> <owl:objectProperty16 </owl:Ontology> rdf:ID="hascoreelement"/>Line 14 makes this document refer to some

terms in the lexical database. There are shared

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<owl:minCardinality <hasabbmame rdf:resourse="#Phen"/>rdf:datatype="&xsd;nonNegativeInteger">1</o </FE>wl:minCardinality> Below is description about the frame Percep-

</owl:restriction> tion_active as an instance of frame class.</rdfs:subclassof> <frame rdf:ID='Vti 1"><rdfs:subclassof> <hasname rdf:resourse="# r t IRA"7>

<owl:Restriction> <hascreator rdf:resourse="# Eh 1JJN "7><owl:objectProperty hasdaterdfresourse="#FEB 20 2006"/>

rdf:resource="hasnoncoreelement"> K r<rdfs:range rdf:resource="&rdfs;literal"/> <hasFE rdf:resourse="# rt 1"7>

</owl:objectProperty> <hasRelation rdf:resourse="# t A,HW1 <<owl:mincardinality "7>rdf:datatype="&xsd;nonNegativeInteger">0</owl </frame>:mincardinality> <FE rdf:ID=" t R,UtK "></owl:Restriction> <hascoreelelment rdf:resourse="# t IRA', Ui

</rdfs:subclassof> <hascoreelelment rdf:resourse="#1MLI"/></owl:class>In CFN, a frame may inherit (A ISA B) from </FE>

other frames or be a composition of a set of sub- <Relation rdf:ID=" 1gframes (which are frames themselves). We define <hasparentrdfresource="#lT ),W"/>these relations as a subclass of the frame and use <hasparent rdf:resource="#qkU1"/>the OWL DL to define the specific relation. </Relation>

<owl:class rdf:ID="relation"> At last, the lexical units are represented in the<rdfs:subclassof rdf:resource="#frame"/> example fragment below. All of them can be<owl:unionofrdf:parsetype="collection"> linked to another type of OWL document whichKowl:class rdf:about="#inheritance"/> specifically represents the lexical units' informa-Kowl:class rdfhabout"#subframe"> tion. Thus we use # to represent this link.</owl:unionof>

</owl:class> <words:lexical rdf:resource="#t"9>After the structure description above, the spe- <words:lexical rdf:resource="#R"/>

cific frame instances would be represented. In theexample fragment below we show the OWL defi- <words:lexical rdf:resource="#0Wk"/>nition of a frame name: t ! < (Percep-tion_active) 4 Annotated sentences representation in

<owl:Class rdf:ID="framename"><rdfs:comment>t0KV - 4N XML

</rdfs:comment> We intend to represent annotated sentences in<owl:oneOf rdf:parseType="Collection"> XML, which is appropriate to describe them. Here

</owl: oneOf 1is given the annotated sentence of aIEgU?w+</owl:Class> ±J, tA/ with the target verb W, which isIn the example fragment below we show part of one of the lexical units of the frame Percep-

the definition about the specific FEs and their de- tion_active.scriptions, including the FE's Chinese name and its 1 <?xml version=" 1.0" encoding="GB2312"?>English one and abbreviate one. Limited to the 2 <!DOCTYPE annotation [scope of this paper, here we only show some of the 3 K!ELEMENT annotation (defini-

representation of the Perception active frame. tion,annotation_sent,layers,layer,labels,label,senteFEs representatlon of the Perceptlon_actlve Irame. nse,text)><FE rdf:ID=" t3EL"> 4 <!ELEMENT definition (#PCDATA)>

<hasfullname 5 <!ELEMENT annotation sent (#PCDATA)>rdf:resourse="#Pereiver_agentive"/> 6 K!ELEMENT layers (#PCDATA)>

Khasabbmname rdf:resourse="#Perc_Agt"/> 7 K!ELEMENT layer (#PCDATA)>K/FE> 8 K!ELEMENT labels (#PCDATA)>

KFE rdf:ID="1|M&"> 9 K!ELEMENT label (#PCDATA)>Khasfullname rdf:resourse="#Phenomenon"/>

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10 <!ELEMENT sentense (#PCDATA)> 37 </layer>11 <!ELEMENT text (#PCDATA)>]> 38 <layer name="sentence"/>12<frametextannotation> 39 <layer name="other"/>13 <annotation name="R" frame=" tltXIH" 40 <layer name="Target">pos="v"> 41 <label name="Target" start=" 14" end=" 15"/>14 <definition>COD:Thm kkK19 i, 42 </layer></definition> 43 <layer name="verb"/>15 <annotation_sent status="MANUAL"> 44 </layers>

The entity <frametextannotation>, which com- 45 <sentence aPos="30244004">prises the rest of the file, includes attributes giving 46 <text>ifAv 'iS1itI1'i{L</text>the name of the lexical unit (k), the name of the 48 K/anntin_enframe ( Uib ,), and the part of speech of the 49 </annotation>lemma (verb).The included element is a definition 50</frametextannotation>of the lemma within the frame, seen on line 14.

The annotation set, shown below, consists of the Acknowledgements<sentence>, which contains only the <text> of thesentence, and a set of layers, each consisting of a This6woisupodby the National 863 Planset of labels. Each label has attributes start and end, (2006AA 0Z 2)a theN atna Soialrsiencegiving the stating and ending position in the text to Fund (07CY 022)awhich it is applied. This sentence is typical of the search fund (0609099).basic CFN annotation style, in that there are threemain layers, one for frame elements ("FE", line 17), Referencesone for the phrase type (PT) of each FE (line 24), Deborah L. McGuinness Frank van Harmelen, OWLand one for the grammatical function (GF) of each Web Ontology Language Overview,FE (line 31). In each case, there are three coexten- http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-features-sive labels; thus the phrase $YKJ., in text 20040210/,02(10),2004.positions 0-9 expresses the FE Perceiver_agentive Fillmore Charles J., Frame Semantics and the Nature of(line 19),has the phrase type "NP" (line 26) and is Language, Origins and Evolution of Language andthe subject of the verb W (line 33). The other two Speech, Annals of the NY Academy of Sciences, Vol.frame elements are shown by similar triplets, 280.1976.Time-dp-adva, meaning a modifier of the target Fillmore, C.J., Frame Semantics, The linguistic Societyverb, and Phenomenon-np-obj. of Korea, Linguistics in the Morning Calm. Seoul:

16 <layers> Hanshin. 1982.17 <layer name="FE"> Liping YOU, Kaiying LIU, Building Chinese FrameNet18 <labels> Database in proceedings of 2005 IEEE International19 <labelname="perc_agt" start="O" end="9"/>'

<label name="pe " start="0" end="9"> Conference on Natural Language Processing and20 <label name="time" start="10" end=" 13"/> Knowledge Engineering (IEEE NLP-KE), pp. 301-21 <label name="phen" start="16" end="19"/P 306,edg2005.g(EE L-K)p.3122 </labels>

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23 </layer> Yu Jiangsheng, Yu Shiwen, The structure of Chinese24 <layer name="PT"> concept dictionary, Journal of Chinese Information25 <labels> Processing, pp. 12-20, 2002, 16 (4).26 <label name="np" start="0" end="9"/>27 <label name="dp" start="10" end=" 13 "/>28 <label name="np" start=" 16" end=" 19"/>29 </labels>30 </layer>31 <layer name="GF">32 <labels>33 <label name="subj" start="0" end="9"/>34 <label name="adva" start="10" end="13"/>35 <label name="obj" start=" 16" end=" 19"/>36 K/labels>

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