Annotating Dynamic Verbs

Many predicates, especially verbs, do not simply denote a state. Rather, they denote a process working towards the coming about of a state, or a process working against the coming about of a state, or the continuation of a state, or a process working towards the end of a state, or a habitual repeated coming about of a state, or the transitioning through a state, or even a process that transitions through a multitude of states.

Using Aspectual Frames

Superframes inidicates this kind of dynamism through a number of special frames that we call aspectual frames: INIT, PREVENTION, CONTINUATION, DEINIT, HABIT, TRANSIT, DYN. They are combined with ordinary frames through a mechanism called frame stacking. For example:

Here, the predicate got has been annotated with the POSSESSION frame, with Kim as possessor and the house as possessum, as we have seen before. What is new is that the INIT frame has been stacked onto the POSSESSION frame, indicating that the verb denotes not the state of possession, but a process working towards it.

Note

On a technical level, frame stacking indicates that the first frame – here: POSSESSION – fills the first role of the second frame – here: INIT.

Further examples of INIT include:

The DEINIT frame indicates a process working towards the end of a state:

The TRANSIT frame indicates a process that transitions through a state where the state does not necessarily exist at the beginning or the end:

The CONTINUATION frame indicates that a state persists:

The PREVENTION frame indicates that a state fails to come about:

The HABIT frame indicates that a state comes about repeatedly, or exists normally:

Finally, the DYN frame indicates a process that is not straightforwardly described in terms of one or more specific states but instead is a complex process transitioning through a multitude of states. Because these states can be very heterogeneous, we usually stack DYN on top of the very general SITUATION frame.

Stacking Aspectual Frames Onto Roles

Some predicates take multiple arguments wrt. different phases of the process. For these cases, there is a special notation where you can stack an aspectual frame atop a role. For example:

Using Aspectual Frames by Themselves

Some verbs take another predicate (more precisely: a phrase headed by another predicate) as an argument and contribute an aspectual meaning. We call such predicates matrix predicates, taking an embedded predicate. In such cases, use aspectual frames by themselves, without stacking.

Using Aspectual Frames with the META Frame

Some matrix verbs take over the syntactic subject of their embedded predicate in what is known as a control construction. In such cases, we stack an aspectual frame over the special META frame. Its scene role is filled by the embedded predicate, and its participant role is filled by the controlled subject. It is then required to add a semantic dependency from the embedded predicate to the controlled subject, even though no such syntactic dependency exists in (basic) UD.