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Deep Case Systems for Language Understanding I LUNG I S UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN PRODUCTION NOTE University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library Large-scale Digitization Project, 2007. Technical Report No. 362 DEEP CASE SYSTEMS FOR LANGUAGE UNDERSTANDING Bertram Bruce Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc. December 1985 Center for the Study of Reading TECHNICAL REPORTS UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 174 Children's Research Center 51 Gerty Drive Champaign, Illinois 61820 BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN INC. 10 Moulton Street Cambridge, Massachusetts 02238 The National Institute oi Educatior U.S. DepartmentEducatioi o Washinglton. D.C. 20201 CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF READING Technical Report No. 362 DEEP CASE SYSTEMS FOR LANGUAGE UNDERSTANDING Bertram Bruce Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc. December 1985 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc. 51 Gerty Drive 10 Moulton Street Champaign, Illinois 61820 Cambridge, Massachusetts 02238 This paper is based on an entry to appear in S. Shapiro (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Artificial Intelligence. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Publishers. I would like to thank Pat Chrosniak and Harry Blanchard for many useful comments on an earlier draft, and Tricia Neth for preparing the manuscript. The writing was supported in part by the National Institute of Education under Contract No. 400-81-0030. Deep Case Systems Deep Case Systems 2 3 Abstract Deep Case Systems This paper reviews work on case grammars, primarily from the For Language Understanding perspective of their use in computer natural language This paper examines the linguistic notion of case as it understanding systems. A distinction between surface cases and applies to natural language understanding. Case theory suggests deep cases in drawn. Deep cases are then discussed in relation an approach to the representation of sentence meaning and is to grammatical explanation and representation of meaning. Four important in accounting for the way the structure of sentences representative approaches to theories of case structures are relates to those meanings. Most AI natural language systems make described. use of these ideas in some form (Bruce, 1975) and the concepts relate closely to the idea of schemata (Rumelhart, 1980) as applied in theories of reading. Applications of case theory have appeared in intelligent systems for such diverse areas as medical diagnosis (Chokhani, 1973; Kulikowski & Weiss, 1971) and speech understanding (Baranofsky, 1974; Nash-Webber, 1975). Research has addressed issues of efficiency, flexibility, scope, and grain (Bobrow & Winograd, 1977; Moore & Newell, 1973; Winograd, 1975). The notion of "case" has been used to refer to several related concepts. Traditionally, it has meant the classification of nouns according to their syntactic role in a sentence, signalled by various inflected forms. In English, only pronouns have these case inflections. For instance, the first person singular pronoun is "I" (nominative case), "me" (accusative/ objective case), or "my" (genitive/possessive case) according to its use as subject, object, or possessive article. In languages such as Greek, all nouns are given affixes which indicate their case. Deep Case Systems Deep Case Systems 4 5 The idea of a direct relationship between inflections and performs an action. Because deep cases describe meanings, cases is one kind of case, also called "surface" or "syntactic rather than the words and structure that express those level" case. For example, in the sentence meanings, they are claimed to be language independent. Much of (1) Susan kicked the football with her foot. the discussion of deep cases has focused on identifying a small each NP has a syntactic role: number of these conceptual roles which can be used for describing * Subject: Susan the meaning of any sentence. A set of deep cases is then called * Direct object: the football a "case system." * Object of the prepositon with: her foot Surface Cases However, in understanding language, it is not sufficient to One way to categorize nouns is by their endings or recognize the syntactic role of noun phrases (NPs). One would inflections. For the purposes of natural language processing, it also like to know the semantic role each NP plays in the meaning is more useful to define surface case as a general syntactic of the sentence. Using the structural features together with categorization of noun phrases. Another way to think of surface lexical, morphological, and semantic information it is possible case is as a property that is assigned to an NP, which is to determine that sentence (1) describes an event of kicking in manifested in the sentence as a syntactic marker or signal, which: called a case marker. 0 Susan is the kicker, the agent; Various linguistic elements can be case markers. The * the football is the kickee, the object; primary one is the case-affix, i.e., an ending attached to a noun * her foot is used to perform the kicking, the form. Many would consider that prepositions (or postpositions) instrument. serve a similar function. Word order, as in English, can also be The latter analysis suggests another sense of "case" (also viewed as a case marker. In addition, case assignment interacts called "deep case," "semantic case," or "theta role"), namely, a with such features as gender and definiteness of the noun phrase. categorization of noun phrases according to their conceptual This vew of case, then, generalizes the notion of surface case roles in the action described by a sentence. Conceptual roles from simple noun inflections to a property which all NPs have and are independent of the particular verb or predicate being which may be expressed with word endings, word order, or other expressed. The agent case, then, is a generalization of many structural features. ideas: kicker, reader, walker, and dancer; i.e., one who Deep Case Systems Deep Case Systems How many distinct surface cases are there? One way to as proper only to the surface structure of some (but determine this is to consider a language in which cases are possibly not all) languages. expressed by nominal inflections. In Latin, for example, five or Because deep cases focus on (conceptual) events rather than six cases are usually distinguished: nominative, accusative, on syntactic constructions, they can help explain the relative genitive, dative, ablative, and sometimes vocative. "acceptability" of certain sentences. For example, one concept But simply identifying surface cases is not that helpful in of the event "kicking," is that in (1). This concept processing natural language, since surface cases are merely encompasses such notions as agent, object, instrument, location, signals for which deep case to assign. In other words, for each and so on. Knowledge of this concept, along with an conceptual role, one needs to account for the case markers that understanding of concepts such as "football" and "foot," give an identify it. The degree to which a case based theory can account account of how to understand (1). At the same time it leads one for inguistic behavior depends upon the way the cases mediate to question sentences such as: between surface forms and conceptual structures. The remaining (2) Susan kicked the new idea. (3) Susan kicked. discussion focusses on conceptual structures, or deep cases. (4) Susan and her foot kicked the football. Deep Cases and Grammatical Explanation Sentence (2) seems strange because the sense of "kick" used The notion of deep cases is not new. For instance, here seems to require a concrete object. Sentence (3) seems Sonnencheins's demand that cases "denote categories of meaning" strange because the object of the kicking needs to be mentioned (see Jespersen, 1965) is in effect a statement that there are two explicitly. Cues from the discourse as to what was kicked (or an levels of cases, the surface level indicated by case-affixes and intransitive interpretation of "kick") are needed to make the a deeper level which may be common to more than one language. sentence comprehensible. Sentence (4) is also odd because, while Fillmore (1968, pp. 2-3) presents a good argument for the either "Susan" or "her foot" or "Susan and Joe" could be the universality of deep cases in natural language, saying that: subject of the sentence, it is difficult to conjoin objects that What is needed is a conception of base structure in play different roles in the meaning of the sentence. which case relationships are primitive terms of the These ideas can be formalized by postulating for each verb a theory and in which such concepts as "subject" and case frame consisting of two elements: "direct object" are missing. The latter are regarded Deep Case Systems Deep Case Systems 9 * case structure. What are the case slots, or set of case structure then the sentence should be easy to understand. cases which play a role in the event denoted by the Otherwise it can be considered ungrammatical or at least as verb, e.g., a "kicking"? Which of these slots are grounds to re-interpret the event. optional, which are obligatory? Most language understanding systems use case frames or * selection restrictions. What are the semantic equivalent mechanisms for semantic checking. A parser must check constraints on the objects which fill each slot in the that the features of nominal constituents in the sentence satisfy case structure? the selection restrictions for the verb. The case frame may help Selection restrictions may vary from global constraints on to disambiguate among senses of the verb; either the case the use of a case with any predicate (e.g., "every agent must be structure or the selection restrictions will distinguish the two animate") to local constraints on the use of a case with a senses. Furthermore, the selection restrictions can help the particular predicate (e.g., "the object of 'spend' must be a system identify anaphoric references. resource"). Thus, for kicking, one might infer a case frame with For instance, consider sentence (1).
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