Abstract
We present a manually constructed seed lexicon encoding the inferential profiles of French event selecting predicates across different uses. The inferential profile (Karttunen, 1971a) of a verb is designed to capture the inferences triggered by the use of this verb in context. It reflects the influence of the clause-embedding verb on the factuality of the event described by the embedded clause. The resource developed provides evidence for the following three hypotheses: (i) French implicative verbs have an aspect dependent profile (their inferential profile varies with outer aspect), while factive verbs have an aspect independent profile (they keep the same inferential profile with both imperfective and perfective aspect); (ii) implicativity decreases with imperfective aspect: the inferences triggered by French implicative verbs combined with perfective aspect are often weakened when the same verbs are combined with imperfective aspect; (iii) implicativity decreases with an animate (deep) subject: the inferences triggered by a verb which is implicative with an inanimate subject are weakened when the same verb is used with an animate subject. The resource additionally shows that verbs with different inferential profiles display clearly distinct sub-categorisation patterns. In particular, verbs that have both factive and implicative readings are shown to prefer infinitival clauses in their implicative reading, and tensed clauses in their factive reading.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Proceedings of the Workshop Computational Semantics Beyond Events and Roles |
Publisher | Association for Computational Linguistics |
Pages | 16-21 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2017 |
Externally published | Yes |
Event | 12th International Conference on Computational Semantics, IWCS 2017 - Montpellier, France Duration: 19 Sept 2017 → 22 Sept 2017 |
Conference
Conference | 12th International Conference on Computational Semantics, IWCS 2017 |
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Country/Territory | France |
City | Montpellier |
Period | 19/09/17 → 22/09/17 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 12th International Conference on Computational Semantics, IWCS 2017 - Long Papers. All rights reserved.
Funding
We are grateful to the anonymous IWCS reviewers for their detailed and constructive feedback, criticisms and suggestions. This work is part of the project B5 of the Collaborative Research Centre 732 hosted by the University of Stuttgart and financed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.
Funders | Funder number |
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the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft |