Linking an Event-type Ontology to Morphosyntax of the Predicate-Argument Structure

ABSTRACT: In the SynSemClass project, we are building a multilingual ontology for text annotation at the semantic (meaning) level. The SynSemClass ontology consists of entries (hereafter called classes ) that represent one event type each, defined across multiple languages. Each class, representing an eventive type, contains a set of words (synonymous or semi-synonymous verbs) that express that event type, as described by its definition. Each verb is linked to both its syntactic properties and its occurrence in similar semantic lexicons for the particular language. Depending on the resource being referred to, the chain of links maps the particular class member to its sense as defined in that other resource. In addition, the semantic roles associated with the class are linked to the arguments (valency slots) as defined by the external resource, which in turn—in some cases—also contain morphosyntactic information relevant for each of the arguments. Such a mapping allows for the extraction of the correct case, adposition, word-order precedence and/or negation as well as other properties important for the corresponding surface form. In this paper, we present the system of the linked data as present in SynSemClass, together with examples taken from the languages covered.