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JSAI International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence

JSAI-isAI 2018: New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence pp 416–431Cite as

Explaining Prefix Contributions in Russian Using Frame Semantics and RSA

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 11717))

Abstract

Variability in the interpretation of Russian verbal prefixes is traditionally regarded as an issue of lexical semantics. Grammars and dictionaries list different usages that are possible for each prefix without explaining when and why particular usages are realised. For a limited amount of prefixed verbs further information can be found in the dictionaries, but often even this is not enough for a precise interpretation. In Zinova (2017) I proposed a Frame semantic analysis that allows to compositionally construct the meaning of a complex verb. In this paper I make a further step towards a computational account of the pragmatic component of the system that would allow to predict the final interpretation of a given verb. I claim that the competition between various verbs derived from the same stem is an important part of the prefixation system that ensures its flexibility and leads to what on the surface looks like lexical ambiguity. The final interpretation of a verb depends on the availability of alternative expressions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    These verbs would constitute aspectual pairs with the imperfective source verbs on the pair-based accounts of Russian verbal system. Janda (2007) calls such verbs Natural Perfectives.

  2. 2.

    Such verbs fall in the Complex Act Perfectives class in the account by Janda (2007).

  3. 3.

    Open Source Lexical Information Network, available online at http://ru.oslin.org/index.php? action=aspect.

  4. 4.

    Available online at ruscorpora.ru.

  5. 5.

    Please note that representing the contribution of the base verb is not the primary goal of this paper and there may be better and more accurate solutions for this.

  6. 6.

    Note that in Zinova (Zinova 2017) the frame for the prefix po- is associated with an additional restriction that the measure dimension ( ) is the verbal dimension ( ). This restriction is removed here.

  7. 7.

    https://probmods.org/.

  8. 8.

    The question of competition between verbs that have different stems but are semantically close is left for future work.

  9. 9.

    This is an arbitrary selected value. By varying this parameter one can model different behaviour: more or less dependent on the rational considerations. If alpha equals zero, pragmatic listener’s behaviour will not differ from that of a literal listener.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Yulia Zinova

Authors
  1. Yulia Zinova
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Correspondence to Yulia Zinova .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Ibaraki, Japan

    Kazuhiro Kojima

  2. University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan

    Maki Sakamoto

  3. Ochanomizu University, Tokyo, Japan

    Koji Mineshima

  4. National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo, Japan

    Ken Satoh

A RSA code

A RSA code

figure y

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Zinova, Y. (2019). Explaining Prefix Contributions in Russian Using Frame Semantics and RSA. In: Kojima, K., Sakamoto, M., Mineshima, K., Satoh, K. (eds) New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence. JSAI-isAI 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11717. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31605-1_30

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31605-1_30

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-31604-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-31605-1

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