Antonyms in Context : A Corpus-Based Semantic Analysis of Swedish Descriptive Adjectives Willners, Caroline 2001 Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Willners, C. (2001). Antonyms in Context : A Corpus-Based Semantic Analysis of Swedish Descriptive Adjectives. [Doctoral Thesis (monograph), General Linguistics]. 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LUND UNIVERSITY PO Box 117 221 00 Lund +46 46-222 00 00 TRAVAUX DE L’INSTITUT DE LINGUISTIQUE DE LUND 40 Antonyms in Context A corpus-based semantic analysis of Swedish descriptive adjectives Caroline Willners © 2001 Caroline Willners ISSN 0347-2558 ISBN 91-974116-1-2 Printed in Sweden Universitetstryckeriet, Lunds universitet Lund 2001 CONTENTS PART I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND......................................................................................................9 1 INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................................................11 2 SOME SEMANTIC DEFINITIONS..........................................................................................................13 2.1 WORDS AND CONCEPTS..........................................................................................................................13 2.2 LEXICAL FIELDS.....................................................................................................................................13 2.2.1 Semantic scales..............................................................................................................................14 2.2.2 Semantic range..............................................................................................................................14 2.2.3 Metaphors......................................................................................................................................15 2.3 SEMANTIC RELATIONS............................................................................................................................15 2.3.1 Synonymy.......................................................................................................................................15 2.3.2 Antonymy.......................................................................................................................................17 2.3.2.1 Gradability.................................................................................................................................................19 2.3.2.2 Incompatibility...........................................................................................................................................19 2.3.2.3 Reciprocity.................................................................................................................................................20 3 WORDNET..................................................................................................................................................21 3.1 INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................................................21 3.2 NOUNS IN WORDNET.............................................................................................................................21 3.2.1 Semantic classes in the Princeton WordNet..................................................................................22 3.2.1.1 Differences from the Princeton WordNet..................................................................................................24 4 A LEXICAL THEORY OF ADJECTIVES..............................................................................................25 4.1 THE GRAMMATICAL CATEGORY OF ADJECTIVES.....................................................................................25 4.1.1 Temporal stability..........................................................................................................................26 4.1.2 Modifiers as discourse anchors.....................................................................................................26 4.1.3 Modifiers as single properties.......................................................................................................27 4.2 ADJECTIVAL FEATURES..........................................................................................................................27 4.2.1 Gradability....................................................................................................................................27 4.2.2 Syntactic functions.........................................................................................................................27 4.2.3 Morphological features.................................................................................................................28 4.3 ADJECTIVE TYPOLOGIES.........................................................................................................................28 4.3.1 Syntactic classifications of adjectives............................................................................................29 4.3.2 Semantic classifications of adjectives............................................................................................30 4.3.2.1 Classification based on reference...............................................................................................................30 4.3.2.1.1 Descriptive adjectives..........................................................................................................................30 4.3.2.1.2 Classifying adjectives..........................................................................................................................31 4.3.2.1.3 Reference-modifying adjectives..........................................................................................................33 4.3.2.1.4 Identifying adjectives..........................................................................................................................33 4.3.2.2 Three dimensions for classification............................................................................................................33 4.3.2.3 A semantic network: WordNet...................................................................................................................34 4.3.2.3.1 Descriptive adjectives..........................................................................................................................34 4.3.2.3.2 Classifying adjectives..........................................................................................................................35 4.3.2.3.3 Reference-modifying adjectives..........................................................................................................35 4.3.2.3.4 Colour adjectives.................................................................................................................................35 4.3.2.3.5 Participles............................................................................................................................................35 4.3.3 Semantico-syntactic classifications of adjectives..........................................................................36 4.3.3.1 Universal semantic categories....................................................................................................................36 4.3.3.2 Semantic relations between adjective and noun.........................................................................................37 4.3.3.2.1 Descriptive adjectives..........................................................................................................................37 4.3.3.3 Classification of the semantic relations......................................................................................................38 4.4 BRINGING THE THEORIES TOGETHER......................................................................................................39 4.5 SUMMARY OF PART I..............................................................................................................................41 PART II: METHODS OF CORPUS RESEARCH..........................................................................................45 5 CORPUS-BASED METHODS...................................................................................................................47 5.1 WHY CORPUS-BASED METHODS?............................................................................................................47 5.2 CORPORA...............................................................................................................................................47 5.2.1 What makes text a corpus?............................................................................................................47 5.2.2 English corpora.............................................................................................................................47 5.2.2.1 The Brown corpus......................................................................................................................................48 5.2.2.2 The British National Corpus......................................................................................................................48 5.2.3 Swedish corpora............................................................................................................................48 5.2.3.1 The SUC....................................................................................................................................................49 5.2.3.2 Parole.........................................................................................................................................................49 5.3 WHAT CAN BE SQUEEZED OUT OF A CORPUS?.........................................................................................49 5.3.1 Quantitative data...........................................................................................................................50 5.3.2 Collocation vs co-occurrence........................................................................................................50 5.3.3 Strength of the association between words....................................................................................50 5.3.4 What is a sentence?.......................................................................................................................51 6 TOOL KIT...................................................................................................................................................53 6.1 PARA – A PAIRING PROGRAM..................................................................................................................53 6.1.1 What Para does not do...................................................................................................................54 6.2 KLASSA – A CLASSIFICATION PROGRAM..................................................................................................55 6.3 SUMMARY OF PART II............................................................................................................................56 PART III: EMPIRICAL STUDIES...................................................................................................................57 7 ADJECTIVAL CO-OCCURRENCE........................................................................................................59 7.1 ANTONYMS IN DISCOURSE......................................................................................................................59 7.1.1 Adjectival compounds in Chinese..................................................................................................59 7.1.2 Antonymy among the Walbiri........................................................................................................60 7.1.3 Speech errors.................................................................................................................................60 7.1.4 Word-association tests...................................................................................................................61 7.2 THE CO-OCCURRENCE HYPOTHESIS........................................................................................................62 7.3 ON THE PROBABILITY OF CO-OCCURRENCE............................................................................................64 7.3.1 Accounting for variation in sentence length..................................................................................64 7.4 EXPERIMENTS.........................................................................................................................................65 7.4.1 Deese’s adjectives, controlled for sentence-length variation........................................................65 7.4.1.1 Corpus and test set.....................................................................................................................................65 7.4.1.2 Results........................................................................................................................................................66 7.4.2 Confirming the results with a larger corpus..................................................................................67 7.4.2.1 Corpus........................................................................................................................................................67 7.4.2.2 Results........................................................................................................................................................67 7.4.3 Data from Swedish.........................................................................................................................69 7.4.3.1 Test set and test corpus..............................................................................................................................69 7.4.3.2 Results........................................................................................................................................................70 7.4.4 Confirming the results for Swedish with a larger corpus..............................................................71 7.4.4.1 The Parole corpus......................................................................................................................................71 7.4.4.2 Results........................................................................................................................................................71 7.4.5 Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................72 7.5 REWRITING THE CO-OCCURRENCE HYPOTHESIS......................................................................................73 7.5.1 Introduction...................................................................................................................................73 7.5.2 Reasons for co-occurrence............................................................................................................73 7.5.3 Something to compare with: The rewritten co-occurrence hypothesis..........................................75 7.6 PROVING THE REWRITTEN CO-OCCURRENCE HYPOTHESIS......................................................................76 7.6.1 Discussion......................................................................................................................................79 7.7 THE SUBSTITUTABILITY HYPOTHESIS......................................................................................................79 7.8 PROSODY AS A CUE FOR WORD ASSOCIATION.........................................................................................82 7.9 DISTINGUISHING ANTONYMS BY LOOKING AT CO-OCCURRENCE PATTERNS............................................83 7.9.1 Experiment.....................................................................................................................................83 7.10 CHAPTER SUMMARY...............................................................................................................................84 8 CO-OCCURRENCE OF ADJECTIVES WITH NOUNS.......................................................................85 8.1 A CASE STUDY: THE SEMANTIC RANGES OF FULL ‘FULL’ AND TOM ‘EMPTY’.........................................87 8.1.1 Introduction...................................................................................................................................87 8.1.2 Previous work on full and tom......................................................................................................88 8.1.2.1 Rusiecki’s and Lundbladh’s work..............................................................................................................88 8.1.3 Clues from dictionaries..................................................................................................................90 8.1.4 Method...........................................................................................................................................91 8.1.4.1 Semantic classification...............................................................................................................................91 8.1.5 Full and tom in SUC......................................................................................................................92 8.1.5.1 The semantic range of full..........................................................................................................................92 8.1.5.2 Containers and rods....................................................................................................................................94 8.1.5.3 The semantic range of tom.........................................................................................................................97 8.1.6 Full and tom in Parole...................................................................................................................98 8.1.6.1 The semantic range of full..........................................................................................................................98 8.1.6.2 The semantic range of tom.......................................................................................................................101 8.1.7 A comparison of the semantic ranges of full and tom.................................................................102 8.2 A CASE STUDY: THE SEMANTIC RANGES OF STOR AND ITS SYNONYMS.................................................105 8.2.1 Introduction.................................................................................................................................106 8.2.2 Test set: stor and its synonyms.....................................................................................................108 8.2.3 Pilot study: Semantic ranges of stor and its synonyms in the SUC..............................................109 8.2.4 SITUATIONs...................................................................................................................................111 8.2.5 Semantic ranges of stor and its synonyms in Parole....................................................................112 8.2.5.1 Changes to the test set..............................................................................................................................112 8.2.5.2 Experiment...............................................................................................................................................114 8.2.5.3 The semantic range of stor.......................................................................................................................115 8.2.5.4 The semantic ranges of the synonyms of stor..........................................................................................116 8.2.5.4.1 Adjectives that frequently modify OBJECTs.......................................................................................118 8.2.5.4.2 Adjectives that frequently modify ABSTRACTIONs.............................................................................129 8.2.5.4.3 Adjectives that frequently modify SITUATIONs..................................................................................135 8.2.5.4.4 Adjectives that frequently modify HUMAN head nouns......................................................................137 8.2.5.5 Summary..................................................................................................................................................141 8.2.6 A closer look at the polysemy of stor...........................................................................................142 8.2.6.1 Introduction..............................................................................................................................................142 8.2.6.2 When the head is not what is modified....................................................................................................144 8.2.6.3 Results......................................................................................................................................................145 8.2.7 Children’s use of stor...................................................................................................................148 8.2.8 The polysemy of stor in a cognitive semantic model....................................................................150 8.3 EXTENDING SWORDNET: CONNECTING ADJECTIVES WITH NOUNS......................................................152 8.4 CHAPTER SUMMARY.............................................................................................................................156 PART IV: CONCLUSIONS.............................................................................................................................159 9 CONCLUSIONS........................................................................................................................................161 REFERENCES..................................................................................................................................................165 LEXICAL RESOURCES.................................................................................................................................171 CORPORA.........................................................................................................................................................171 Acknowledgements Life is a journey, and so is the process of writing a dissertation. I have come upon many obstacles on the way, but also many rewarding events. The people who have helped me are many. My supervisors, Åke Viberg and Jan-Olof Svantesson have been indispensable. Åke has guided me in the field of lexical semantics and been of great help in finding a balance between lexical semantics and corpus-based methods. He has also developed my early work with Swedish adjectives in WordNet into a large project with the aim to cover the base vocabulary of Swedish, which I find very exciting and look forward to keep on working with. Jan-Olof, with his stoical calmness, has patiently answered an endless number of questions and been a great source of encouragement. Bengt Sigurd, Barbara Gawronska and Mats Eeg-Olofsson are all responsible for my ending up in computational linguistics; they trained me as an undergraduate and inspired me to become a researcher. They have kept on supporting me and I am deeply grateful to Bengt and Mats for their thorough reading and commenting on the manuscript for this book. Anders Holtsberg developed correct statistical methods and made sure I understood what they did. I owe particular thanks to Carita Paradis and Åsa Wengelin, for reading and commenting on parts of the book and for being great sources of encouragement and inspiration. I am indebted to “the SWordNet Girls”: Ann Lindvall, Teresa Johansson, Kerstin Lindmark and Ingmarie Mellenius for many valuable discussions and comments on early manuscripts. Johan Segerbäck improved the readability of the book with great commitment and also provided many insightful comments and suggestions. I have had many inspiring discussions with Birgitta Lastow and Johan Dahl, who have also been responsible for “computer support” in a wide sense. Olof Ekedahl helped me with the data from the BNC. Daniel Ridings kindly supplied material from the Parole corpus. Britt Nordbeck and Ingrid Mellqvist have helped me with a million practicalities. Many people at the department have inspired me, helped me with practicalities, and been great partners in discussions (both at the seminars and around the coffee table): Niclas Burenhult, Anna Flyman, Elisabeth Zetterholm, Victoria Johansson, Sven Strömqvist, Eva Gårding, Gösta Bruce, Merle Horne, Gao Hong, Arthur Holmer, Karina Vamling, Lars-Åke Henningsson, Marcus Unesson, Marianne Gullberg, Vivan Franzén, Paula Kuylenstierna, and many others. I would also like to express my gratitude to my family for putting up with me and my piles of papers during the past years. My mother, Veronica, for her fantastic support; my sister, Josefine, for delivering an endless number of timely words, my favourite niece and nephew, Emma and Olle, for many laughters and insightful comments; and my brother in law, Per Anders, for taking such good care of them. Per, my life companion and second spine, had endless patience with the diagrams in this book, with numerous computer problems, and with me. My deepest thanks to all of you. Parts of this work have been carried out within the projects Swedish WordNet (Svenskt OrdNät) and Crosslinguistic lexicology (Tvärspråklig lexikologi), both financially supported by the Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences. I dedicate this work to my grandfather, Harry Willners, who earned his hat but never got it, and to my father, Lars-Gösta Willners, who was a master of communication, with and without words. I regret that none of them got the opportunity to read this book. Abbreviations ABS ABSTRACTION ACT HUMAN ACTION ANI ANIMAL CREA CREATURE DEF definite form HUM HUMAN INDEF indefinite form MON MONETARY REPRESENTATION NEU neuter OBJ OBJECT ORG ORGANISATION PHEN PHENOMENON PL plural POSS POSSESSION PSY PSYCHOLOGICAL FEATURE SG singular SIT SITUATION UTR non-neuter Part I: Theoretical Background 01-04-22 9