| .. Copyright (C) 2001-2024 NLTK Project |
| .. For license information, see LICENSE.TXT |
|
|
| ======== |
| FrameNet |
| ======== |
|
|
| The FrameNet corpus is a lexical database of English that is both human- |
| and machine-readable, based on annotating examples of how words are used |
| in actual texts. FrameNet is based on a theory of meaning called Frame |
| Semantics, deriving from the work of Charles J. Fillmore and colleagues. |
| The basic idea is straightforward: that the meanings of most words can |
| best be understood on the basis of a semantic frame: a description of a |
| type of event, relation, or entity and the participants in it. For |
| example, the concept of cooking typically involves a person doing the |
| cooking (Cook), the food that is to be cooked (Food), something to hold |
| the food while cooking (Container) and a source of heat |
| (Heating_instrument). In the FrameNet project, this is represented as a |
| frame called Apply_heat, and the Cook, Food, Heating_instrument and |
| Container are called frame elements (FEs). Words that evoke this frame, |
| such as fry, bake, boil, and broil, are called lexical units (LUs) of |
| the Apply_heat frame. The job of FrameNet is to define the frames |
| and to annotate sentences to show how the FEs fit syntactically around |
| the word that evokes the frame. |
|
|
| |
| Frames |
| |
|
|
| A Frame is a script-like conceptual structure that describes a |
| particular type of situation, object, or event along with the |
| participants and props that are needed for that Frame. For |
| example, the "Apply_heat" frame describes a common situation |
| involving a Cook, some Food, and a Heating_Instrument, and is |
| evoked by words such as bake, blanch, boil, broil, brown, |
| simmer, steam, etc. |
|
|
| We call the roles of a Frame "frame elements" (FEs) and the |
| frame-evoking words are called "lexical units" (LUs). |
|
|
| FrameNet includes relations between Frames. Several types of |
| relations are defined, of which the most important are: |
|
|
| - Inheritance: An IS-A relation. The child frame is a subtype |
| of the parent frame, and each FE in the parent is bound to |
| a corresponding FE in the child. An example is the |
| "Revenge" frame which inherits from the |
| "Rewards_and_punishments" frame. |
|
|
| - Using: The child frame presupposes the parent frame as |
| background, e.g the "Speed" frame "uses" (or presupposes) |
| the "Motion" frame; however, not all parent FEs need to be |
| bound to child FEs. |
|
|
| - Subframe: The child frame is a subevent of a complex event |
| represented by the parent, e.g. the "Criminal_process" frame |
| has subframes of "Arrest", "Arraignment", "Trial", and |
| "Sentencing". |
|
|
| - Perspective_on: The child frame provides a particular |
| perspective on an un-perspectivized parent frame. A pair of |
| examples consists of the "Hiring" and "Get_a_job" frames, |
| which perspectivize the "Employment_start" frame from the |
| Employer's and the Employee's point of view, respectively. |
|
|
| To get a list of all of the Frames in FrameNet, you can use the |
| `frames()` function. If you supply a regular expression pattern to the |
| `frames()` function, you will get a list of all Frames whose names match |
| that pattern: |
|
|
| >>> from pprint import pprint |
| >>> from operator import itemgetter |
| >>> from nltk.corpus import framenet as fn |
| >>> from nltk.corpus.reader.framenet import PrettyList |
| >>> x = fn.frames(r'(?i)crim') |
| >>> x.sort(key=itemgetter('ID')) |
| >>> x |
| [<frame ID=200 name=Criminal_process>, <frame ID=500 name=Criminal_investigation>, ...] |
| >>> PrettyList(sorted(x, key=itemgetter('ID'))) |
| [<frame ID=200 name=Criminal_process>, <frame ID=500 name=Criminal_investigation>, ...] |
|
|
| To get the details of a particular Frame, you can use the `frame()` |
| function passing in the frame number: |
|
|
| >>> from pprint import pprint |
| >>> from nltk.corpus import framenet as fn |
| >>> f = fn.frame(202) |
| >>> f.ID |
| 202 |
| >>> f.name |
| 'Arrest' |
| >>> f.definition |
| "Authorities charge a Suspect, who is under suspicion of having committed a crime..." |
| >>> len(f.lexUnit) |
| 11 |
| >>> pprint(sorted([x for x in f.FE])) |
| ['Authorities', |
| 'Charges', |
| 'Co-participant', |
| 'Manner', |
| 'Means', |
| 'Offense', |
| 'Place', |
| 'Purpose', |
| 'Source_of_legal_authority', |
| 'Suspect', |
| 'Time', |
| 'Type'] |
| >>> pprint(f.frameRelations) |
| [<Parent=Intentionally_affect |
|
|
| The `frame()` function shown above returns a dict object containing |
| detailed information about the Frame. See the documentation on the |
| `frame()` function for the specifics. |
|
|
| You can also search for Frames by their Lexical Units (LUs). The |
| `frames_by_lemma()` function returns a list of all frames that contain |
| LUs in which the 'name' attribute of the LU matches the given regular |
| expression. Note that LU names are composed of "lemma.POS", where the |
| "lemma" part can be made up of either a single lexeme (e.g. 'run') or |
| multiple lexemes (e.g. 'a little') (see below). |
|
|
| >>> PrettyList(sorted(fn.frames_by_lemma(r'(?i)a little'), key=itemgetter('ID'))) |
| [<frame ID=189 name=Quanti...>, <frame ID=2001 name=Degree>] |
|
|
| |
| Lexical Units |
| |
|
|
| A lexical unit (LU) is a pairing of a word with a meaning. For |
| example, the "Apply_heat" Frame describes a common situation |
| involving a Cook, some Food, and a Heating Instrument, and is |
| _evoked_ by words such as bake, blanch, boil, broil, brown, |
| simmer, steam, etc. These frame-evoking words are the LUs in the |
| Apply_heat frame. Each sense of a polysemous word is a different |
| LU. |
|
|
| We have used the word "word" in talking about LUs. The reality |
| is actually rather complex. When we say that the word "bake" is |
| polysemous, we mean that the lemma "bake.v" (which has the |
| word-forms "bake", "bakes", "baked", and "baking") is linked to |
| three different frames: |
|
|
| - Apply_heat: "Michelle baked the potatoes for 45 minutes." |
|
|
| - Cooking_creation: "Michelle baked her mother a cake for her birthday." |
|
|
| - Absorb_heat: "The potatoes have to bake for more than 30 minutes." |
|
|
| These constitute three different LUs, with different |
| definitions. |
|
|
| Multiword expressions such as "given name" and hyphenated words |
| like "shut-eye" can also be LUs. Idiomatic phrases such as |
| "middle of nowhere" and "give the slip (to)" are also defined as |
| LUs in the appropriate frames ("Isolated_places" and "Evading", |
| respectively), and their internal structure is not analyzed. |
|
|
| Framenet provides multiple annotated examples of each sense of a |
| word (i.e. each LU). Moreover, the set of examples |
| (approximately 20 per LU) illustrates all of the combinatorial |
| possibilities of the lexical unit. |
|
|
| Each LU is linked to a Frame, and hence to the other words which |
| evoke that Frame. This makes the FrameNet database similar to a |
| thesaurus, grouping together semantically similar words. |
|
|
| In the simplest case, frame-evoking words are verbs such as |
| "fried" in: |
|
|
| "Matilde fried the catfish in a heavy iron skillet." |
|
|
| Sometimes event nouns may evoke a Frame. For example, |
| "reduction" evokes "Cause_change_of_scalar_position" in: |
|
|
| "...the reduction of debt levels to $665 million from $2.6 billion." |
|
|
| Adjectives may also evoke a Frame. For example, "asleep" may |
| evoke the "Sleep" frame as in: |
|
|
| "They were asleep for hours." |
|
|
| Many common nouns, such as artifacts like "hat" or "tower", |
| typically serve as dependents rather than clearly evoking their |
| own frames. |
|
|
| Details for a specific lexical unit can be obtained using this class's |
| `lus()` function, which takes an optional regular expression |
| pattern that will be matched against the name of the lexical unit: |
|
|
| >>> from pprint import pprint |
| >>> PrettyList(sorted(fn.lus(r'(?i)a little'), key=itemgetter('ID'))) |
| [<lu ID=14733 name=a little.n>, <lu ID=14743 name=a little.adv>, ...] |
|
|
| You can obtain detailed information on a particular LU by calling the |
| `lu()` function and passing in an LU's 'ID' number: |
|
|
| >>> from pprint import pprint |
| >>> from nltk.corpus import framenet as fn |
| >>> fn.lu(256).name |
| 'foresee.v' |
| >>> fn.lu(256).definition |
| 'COD: be aware of beforehand; predict.' |
| >>> fn.lu(256).frame.name |
| 'Expectation' |
| >>> fn.lu(256).lexemes[0].name |
| 'foresee' |
|
|
| Note that LU names take the form of a dotted string (e.g. "run.v" or "a |
| little.adv") in which a lemma precedes the "." and a part of speech |
| (POS) follows the dot. The lemma may be composed of a single lexeme |
| (e.g. "run") or of multiple lexemes (e.g. "a little"). The list of |
| POSs used in the LUs is: |
|
|
| v - verb |
| n - noun |
| a - adjective |
| adv - adverb |
| prep - preposition |
| num - numbers |
| intj - interjection |
| art - article |
| c - conjunction |
| scon - subordinating conjunction |
|
|
| For more detailed information about the info that is contained in the |
| dict that is returned by the `lu()` function, see the documentation on |
| the `lu()` function. |
|
|
| |
| Annotated Documents |
| |
|
|
| The FrameNet corpus contains a small set of annotated documents. A list |
| of these documents can be obtained by calling the `docs()` function: |
|
|
| >>> from pprint import pprint |
| >>> from nltk.corpus import framenet as fn |
| >>> d = fn.docs('BellRinging')[0] |
| >>> d.corpname |
| 'PropBank' |
| >>> d.sentence[49] |
| full-text sentence (...) in BellRinging: |
| <BLANKLINE> |
| <BLANKLINE> |
| [POS] 17 tags |
| <BLANKLINE> |
| [POS_tagset] PENN |
| <BLANKLINE> |
| [text] + [annotationSet] |
| <BLANKLINE> |
| `` I live in hopes that the ringers themselves will be drawn into |
| ***** ******* ***** |
| Desir Cause_t Cause |
| [1] [3] [2] |
| <BLANKLINE> |
| that fuller life . |
| ****** |
| Comple |
| [4] |
| (Desir=Desiring, Cause_t=Cause_to_make_noise, Cause=Cause_motion, Comple=Completeness) |
| <BLANKLINE> |
|
|
| >>> d.sentence[49].annotationSet[1] |
| annotation set (...): |
| <BLANKLINE> |
| [status] MANUAL |
| <BLANKLINE> |
| [LU] (6605) hope.n in Desiring |
| <BLANKLINE> |
| [frame] (366) Desiring |
| <BLANKLINE> |
| [GF] 2 relations |
| <BLANKLINE> |
| [PT] 2 phrases |
| <BLANKLINE> |
| [text] + [Target] + [FE] + [Noun] |
| <BLANKLINE> |
| `` I live in hopes that the ringers themselves will be drawn into |
| - ^^^^ ^^ ***** |
| E supp su Event |
| <BLANKLINE> |
| that fuller life . |
| |
| <BLANKLINE> |
| (E=Experiencer, su=supp) |
| <BLANKLINE> |
| <BLANKLINE> |
|
|