Lexical Semantics Summer Semester 2004

David Schlangen
email: das .curly thingy. ling.uni-potsdam.de
Office: Haus 24, Room 1.51
Office Hour: Mondays 1pm-2pm (new!!)
Class: Tuesdays 1pm-3pm

[this document: http://www.ling.uni-potsdam.de/~das/teaching/lexsem04.html]

Basis for Assessment: Presence at Class; Group Presentation (~35min); Handout (not just printout of slides!), which will be put on this page here; please also come to see me during office hours before your presentation. For Hauptseminar level you will also have to prepare a term paper (on same topic as your presentation).
Please also read (or at least skip through) the chapters/papers even when you're not presenting.

On this page you can find:

All required reading will (eventually) be in the Handapparat or in
the reader in the office; many of the papers can also be
downloaded (see links below).


Course Plan

#DateTopic, Reading
First Half: Introduction to Lexical Semantics
In the first half of the course we will go through a textbook on lexical semantics, to get a thorough introduction to the problems, approaches, and terminology of the field.
1 13.04.04 Introduction; Organisational Stuff

Reading: Cruse Ch.1 (also see other introductions to lexical semantics listed below).
Handout: slides; handout (from last year's course, prepared by M. Stede)
2 20.04.04 Lexical Units

Reading: Cruse Ch.2
Presentation: Uta Kaltwaßer
Handout:handout, slides

Reading: Cruse Ch.3
Presentation: Andrei Litvinov
Handout:
3 27.04.04 Lexical Relations and Lexical Configurations

Reading: Cruse Ch.4
Presentation: Mira Grubic
Handout: handout; slides

Reading: Cruse Ch.5
Presentation: Kai Sippel; Jan Baresel
Handout: slides
04.05.04 No class!!
4 11.05.04 Quick Recap of Stuff Done So Far

Handout: slides
5 18.05.04 Taxonomies

Reading: Cruse Ch.6
Presentation: David Schlangen; Katharina Moczko
Handout: slides first part; slides second part

Opposites and Synonyms

Reading: Cruse Ch.9
Presentation: Kristin Irsig
Handout: slides; hand out

Reading: Cruse Ch.12
Presentation: Carin Klaerding; Jessica Rosenberg
Handout: slides part 1; handout part 1; slides part 2; handout part 2;
6 25.05.04 --- Overflow ---

If we manage to get through all presentations by this date, I will summarise the first half of the course; otherwise this is room for the rest of the presentations.
Second Half: Current Approaches to Lexical Semantics
The readings for the second half of the course are a bit more substantial, and so can be presented by groups of three or even four students; they are also probably a bit more interesting than the Cruse chapters for more advanced students (but that's not to mean that other students should let themselves be scared away!).
7 01.06.04 Lexical Semantics of Predicative Forms and Wordnet

Reading: Chapter 1 in (Saint-Dizier 1999): "An Introduction to the Lexical Semantics of Predicative Forms"; and Wordnet documentation (can be found here).
Presentation: Marco Zugck
Handout: handout

This chapter gives a nice overview of current approaches to lexical semantics, some of which we will see in more detail later. It also mentions WordNet, and so gives you opportunity to explore this implementation of ideas from lexical semantics.
This should be especially interesting for students with background in Computational Linguistics.
8 08.06.04 Lexical Semantics of Verbs and Thematic Roles

Reading: (Dowty 1989), "On the Semantic Content of the Notion `Thematic Role' "
Presentation: Elmostafa Tourabi; Ranja Athousaki
Handout: slides part 1, handout part 1;

This papers analyses in detail the notion of "thematic roles", i.e. the idea that the participiants in events denoted by verbs play certain classifiable roles such as "agent" or "patient". The paper is a bit heavy going, but a seminal attempt to make the notoriously vague concept a bit more precise.
It would help if you have done some formal semantics if you want to present this paper, but in any case the formal details don't matter as much as the general argumentation.
9 15.06.04 From Lexical Semantics to Syntax I

Reading: (Levin and Hovav, 1996)
Presentation: Chia-Chen Han; Felix Engelmann
Handout: slides part 2; handout part 2

How do we get from knowing the participiants in an event denoted by a verb to knowing how they are realised syntactically (as arguments, adjuncts, etc.)? This paper presents a nice overview of approaches to this question.
10 22.06.04 From Lexical Semantics to Syntax II

Reading: (Davis and Koenig, 2000)
Presentation: Andreas Peldszus
Handout:slides part 1; slides part 2; handout part 2


This paper presents an implementation of the idea that the subcategorisation frame of verbs is predictable from a (semantic) classification of verbs, within the framework of HPSG.
It might help if you have heard of HPSG, but that's not a prerequisite.
11 29.06.04 Systematic Polysemy

Reading: (Pustejovsky 1991)
Presentation: Vasilik Koukoulioti; Ute Striegler; Katharina Hogrefe
Handout:

This is a hugely influential paper in which Pustejovsky describes his idea of a generative lexicon, i.e. a lexicon where generative devices produce out of a single, underspecified lexical entry different senses, depending on the context of use.
12 06.07.04 Lexical Semantics and Pragmatics

Reading: (Lascarides and Copestake, 1998)
Presentation: Marion Petzhold, Andreas Pusch
Handout: 2nd part, extended

This paper connects lexical semantics with pragmatics, bringing together ideas from the generative lexicon with the discourse theory SDRT.
It might help if you've heard of SDRT, but again that's not a prerequisite. The technical details again are not that important, it's the argument that interesting here.
13 13.07.04 --- Overflow ---

If we manage to get through all presentations by then, I summarise the second half of the course; otherwise this is space for the rest of the presentations.



Notes on Presentations

Summarise! Especially with the longer papers, don't present every example from the paper, think about what the core claim is and how it's supported.
Be critical! Don't just present the content of the chapters / papers you have chosen; also think about whether stuff makes sense, how it fits in with previous presentations, try to translate examples into other languages, etc.


Further Reading

Interesting Websites

  • Web page of introductory course at San Diego State; with many links to papers.
  • Ann Copestake's publication page; besides links to interesting papers, there is also course material for introductions to lexical semantics.
  • Wordnet; FrameNet; SALSA (Saarbrücken Lexical Semantics Annotation and Analysis Project)
  • Fairly extensive bibliography on lexical semantics, probably only interesting if you are looking for references.

Papers and other material

  • (To be completed.. But note that most of the authors mentioned above have webpages with publications.. Google is your friend.)