A note on the definition of semantic annotation languages

2020

This paper proposes a semantics ABS for the model-theoretic interpretation of annotation structures. It provides a language ABSr, that represents semantic forms in a (possibly 𝜆-free) type-theoretic first-order logic. For semantic compositionality, the representation language introduces two operators ⊕ and ⊘ with subtypes for the conjunctive or distributive composition of semantic forms. ABS also introduces a small set of logical predicates to represent semantic forms in a simplified format. The use of ABSr is illustrated with some annotation structures that conform to ISO 24617 standards on semantic annotation such as ISO-TimeML and ISO-Space.

2010

In this paper, we present, Salt, a framework for mapping heterogeneous linguistic annotation formats into each other using a model-based approach, i.e. independently of the actual formats in which the corresponding linguistic data is being expressed. As we describe the underlying concept of this framework, we identify how it echoes ongoing standardisation activities within ISO committee TC 37/SC 4, and in particular, the possible conceptual equivalences with ISO CD 24612 (LAF) combined with ISO 24610-1 (FSR), as well as the possible role of the central data category registry (ISOCat), currently under deployment. We thus show the adequacy of our methodology and its capacity to integrate a wide range of possible linguistic annotation models.

Building and Using Parsed Corpora. Kluwer, …, 2003

There is a need for a general framework for linguistic annotation that is flexible and extensible enough to accommodate different annotation types and different theoretical and practical approaches, while at the same time enabling their representation in a "pivot" format that can serve as the basis for comparative evaluation, merging, and the development of reusable editing and processing tools. To answer this need, we have developed a framework comprised of an abstract model for a variety of different annotation types (e.g., morpho-syntactic tagging, syntactic annotation, co-reference annotation, etc.), which can be instantiated in different ways depending on the annotator's approach and goals. The results have been incorporated into XCES (Ide, et al., 2000a), the XML instantiation of the Corpus Encoding Standard (Ide, 1998a,b), which provides a ready-made, standard encoding format together with a data architecture designed specifically for linguistically annotated corpora.

Dialogue, 2006

This paper constitutes a preliminary report on the work carried out on semantic content annotation in the LIRICS project, in close collaboration with the activities of ISO TC 37/SC 4/TDG 3 1 . This consists primarily of: (1) identifying commonalities in alternative approaches to the annotation and representation of various types of semantic information; and (2) developing methodological principles and concepts for identifying and characterising representational concepts for semantic content. The LIRICS project does not aim to develop a standard format for the annotation and representation of semantic content, but at providing well-defined descriptive concepts. In particular, the aim is to build an on-line registry of definitions of such concepts, called 'data categories', in accordance with ISO standard 12620. These semantic data categories are abstract concepts, whose use is not restricted to any particular format or representation language. We advocate the use of the metamodel as a tool to extract the most important of these abstract overarching concepts, with examples from dialogue act, temporal, reference and semantic role annotation.

This paper constitutes a preliminary report on the work carried out on semantic content annotation in the LIRICS project, in close collaboration with the activities of ISO TC 37/SC 4/TDG 3 1. This consists primarily of: (1) identifying commonalities in alternative approaches to the annotation and representation of various types of semantic information; and (2) developing methodological principles and concepts for identifying and characterising representational concepts for semantic content. The LIRICS project does not aim to develop a standard format for the annotation and representation of semantic content, but at providing well-defined descriptive concepts. In particular, the aim is to build an on-line registry of definitions of such concepts, called 'data categories', in accordance with ISO standard 12620. These semantic data categories are abstract concepts, whose use is not restricted to any particular format or representation language. We advocate the use of the metamodel as a tool to extract the most important of these abstract overarching concepts, with examples from dialogue act, temporal, reference and semantic role annotation.

In this paper, we apply the annotation scheme design methodology defined in (Bunt, 2010) and demonstrate its use for generating a mapping from an existing annotation scheme to a representation in GrAF format. The most important features of this methodology are (1) the distinction of the abstract and concrete syntax of an annotation language; (2) the specification of a formal semantics for the abstract syntax; and (3) the formalization of the relation between abstract and concrete syntax, which guarantees that any concrete syntax inherits the semantics of the abstract syntax, and thus guarantees meaning-preserving mappings between representation formats. By way of illustration, we apply this mapping strategy to annotations from ISO-TimeML, PropBank, and FrameNet.

This paper reports a critical analysis of the ISO TimeML standard, in the light of several experiences of temporal annotation that were conducted on spoken French. It shows that the norm suffers from weaknesses that should be corrected to fit a larger variety of needs in NLP and in corpus linguistics. We present our proposition of some improvements of the norm before it will be revised by the ISO Committee in 2017. These modifications concern mainly (1) Enrichments of well identified features of the norm: temporal function of TIMEX time expressions, additional types for TLINK temporal relations; (2) Deeper modifications concerning the units or features annotated: clarification between time and tense for EVENT units, coherence of representation between temporal signals (the SIGNAL unit) and TIMEX modifiers (the MOD feature); (3) A recommendation to perform temporal annotation on top of a syntactic (rather than lexical) layer (temporal annotation on a treebank).

2020

The paper presents an annotation schema with the following characteristics: it is formally compact; it systematically and compositionally expands into fullfledged analytic representations, exploiting simple algorithms of typed feature structures; its representation of various dimensions of semantic content is systematically integrated with morpho-syntactic and lexical representation; it is integrated with a ‘deep’ parsing grammar. Its compactness allows for efficient handling of large amounts of structures and data, and it is interoperable in covering multiple aspects of grammar and meaning. The code and its analytic expansions represent a cross-linguistically wide range of phenomena of languages and language structures. This paper presents its syntactic-semantic interoperability first from a theoretical point of view and then as applied in linguistic description.

In this paper we present a novel approach to the incremental incorporation of semantic information in natural language processing which does not fall victim to the notorious problems of ambiguity and lack of robustness, namely through the formal interpretation of semantic annotation. We present a formal semantics for a language for the integrated annotation of several types of semantic information, such as (co-)reference relations, temporal information, and semantic roles. This semantics has the form of a compositional translation into second-order predicate logic. We show that a truly semantic approach to the annotation of different types of semantic information raises interesting issues relating to the borders between these areas of semantics, and to the consistency of semantic annotations in multiple areas or in multiple annotation layers. The approach is incremental in the sense that it is designed to be extendable to the semantic annotation of many types of semantic information.

Proceedings of the ACL 2003 workshop on Linguistic …, 2003

This paper describes the outline of a linguistic annotation framework under development by ISO TC37 SC WG1-1. This international standard provides an architecture for the creation, annotation, and manipulation of linguistic resources and processing software. The goal is to provide maximum flexibility for encoders and annotators, while at the same time enabling interchange and re-use of annotated linguistic resources. We describe here the outline of the standard for the purposes of enabling annotators to begin to explore how their schemes may map into the framework.