Encoding Event Structure in Urdu/Hindi VerbNet

Tracy Holloway King, Annette Hautli-Janisz

Abstract:

We propose a new kind of event structure
representation for computational linguistics,
based on the theoretical framework of FirstPhase Syntax (Ramchand, 2008). We show
that the approach not only gives a theoretically well-motivated set of subevents and related semantic roles, it also posits the levels of representation needed for analyzing
a linguistic phenomenon that has repeatedly
caused problems in computational systems,
namely the treatment of complex predication. In particular, we look at V+V complex predicates in Urdu/Hindi and show that
Ramchand’s subevent decomposition implemented in a VerbNet-style resource allows for
a consistent semantic analysis of these complex events. We also show how the proposed
event representation can be added to existing
resources in the language, in particular the
Hindi-Urdu Treebank and Hindi PropBank.