Language and Logic Courses
Introductory Course
Semantic Modeling with Frames,
Rainer Osswald (Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, Germany) and Wiebke Petersen (Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, Germany)
Week 1, 17:00 – 18:30, Room 267, Floor 2
The course provides an introduction to the frame-based modeling of natural language semantics. Its main goal is to teach students the formal foundations of frames and how to apply them to the modeling of various semantic phenomena. The course starts with an overview of the history of frames followed by a brief discussion of the pros and cons of attribute-based structures such as frames for the representation of semantic and conceptual knowledge. Next we give a formal definition of frames as relational structures, and we show how such structures can be specified by means of an appropriate logical language. We then illustrate how frames can be applied to the modeling of various semantic phenomena and domains. Special emphasis is put on the representation of events and changes. Moreover, we will address issues of frame composition and the syntax-semantics interface. The course closes with an outlook to more advanced topics.
Course requirements
Basic background in logic, semantics and syntax as acquired in introductory courses at undergraduate level.
Course slides
- Part 1: History, motivation, overview
- Part 2: Formal foundations
- Part 3: A model of the syntax-semantics interface
- Part 4: Formal foundations: extensions
- Part 5: Nominal frames and Shifts
- Part 6: Nominal frames and Shifts
Background reading
- Thomas Gamerschlag, Doris Gerland, Rainer Osswald, and Wiebke Petersen. 2014. General Introduction. In Thomas Gamerschlag et al. (eds.), Frames and Concept Types, Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy 94, 3–21. Springer.
- Laura Kallmeyer and Rainer Osswald. 2013. Syntax-driven semantic frame composition in Lexicalized Tree Adjoining Grammars. Journal of Language Modelling 1(2):267–330.
- Laura Kallmeyer, Rainer Osswald and Sylvain Pogodalla. 2016. For-Adverbials and Aspectual Interpretation. An LTAG Analysis Using Hybrid Logic and Frame Semantics. In Christopher Piñon (ed.), Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 11, 61–90.
- Rainer Osswald and Robert D. Van Valin, Jr. 2014. FrameNet, Frame Structure, and the Syntax-Semantics Interface. In Thomas Gamerschlag et al. (eds.), Frames and Concept Types, Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy 94, 125–156. Springer.
- Wiebke Petersen. 2007. Representation of Concepts as Frames. In: Complex Cognition and Qualitative Science. Eds.: Jurgis Skilters, Fiorenza Toccafondi and Gerhard Stemberger. The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication, 2, 151-170. University of Latvia.
- Wiebke Petersen and Tanja Osswald. (2014). Concept Composition in Frames: Focusing on Genitive Constructions. In: Frames and Concept Types. Applications in Language, Cognition, and Philosophy. Eds.: Thomas Gamerschlag and Doris Gerland and Rainer Osswald and Wiebke Petersen. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, 94, Springer. Heidelberg, New York, Dordrecht, London.