A Dynamic Model of Aspectual Composition
Nancy Chang, Daniel Gildea, Srini Narayanan
Abstract
This paper describes results of a dynamic model of aspectual composition that demonstrates how features necessary for planning and controlling actions can also motivate and ground simple analyses of a number of aspectual phenomena. Anovel feature of the model is an active computational representation for verb semantics called x-schemas, an extension of the Petri net formalism that can encode goals, resources and other features a#ecting aspect. Vexing problems of aspectual composition lend themselves to simple analyses in terms of the context-sensitiveinteraction between verb-speci#c x-schemas and a controller x-schema that captures important regularities in the evolution of events. The resulting x-schemas can be elaborated and constrained by such factors as tense, temporal modi#ers, nominals and pragmatic context, providing a rich representation that supports simulative inference in language understanding. Introduction Since Vendler's seminal paper #1967#, the complex...