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<Paper uid="P96-1053">
  <Title>Using Terminological Knowledge Representation Languages to Manage Linguistic Resources</Title>
  <Section position="2" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="intro">
    <SectionTitle>
1 Introduction
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Problems with consistency and completeness can arise when writing a wide-coverage grammar or analyzing lexical data since both tasks involve working with large amounts of data. Since terminological knowledge representation languages have been valuable for managing data in other applications such as a software information system that manages a large knowledge base of plans (Devanbu and Litman, 1991), it is worthwhile considering how these languages can be used in linguistic data management tasks. In addition to inheritance, terminological systems provide a criterial semantics for links and automatic classification which inserts a new concept into a taxonomy so that it directly links to concepts more general than it and more specific than it (Woods and Schmolze, 1992).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> Terminological languages have been used in NLP applications for lexical representation (Burkert, 1995), and grammar representation (Brachman and Schmolze, 1991), and to assist in the acquisition and maintenance of domain specific lexical semantics knowledge (Ayuso et al., 1987). Here I explore additional linguistic data management tasks. In particular I examine how a terminological language such as Classic (Brachman et al., 1991) can assist a lexical semanticist with the management of verb classes. In conclusion, I discuss ways in which terminological languages can be used during grammar writing.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> Consider the tasks that confront a lexical semanticist. The regular participation of verbs belonging to a particular semantic class in a limited number of syntactic alternations is crucial in lexical semantics. A popular research direction assumes that the syntactic behavior of a verb is systematically influenced by its meaning (Levin, 1993; Hale and Keyser, 1987) and that any set of verbs whose members pattern together with respect to syntactic alternations should form a semantically coherent class (Levin, 1993). Once such a class is identified, the meaning component that the member verbs share can be identified. This gives further insight into lexical representation for the words in the class (Levin, 1993). Terminological languages can support three important functions in this domain. First, the process of representing the system in a taxonomic logic can serve as a check on the rigor and precision of the original account. Once the account is represented, the terminological system can flag inconsistencies.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> Second, the classifier can identify an existing verb class that might explain an unassigned verb's behavior. That is, given a set of syntactically analyzed sentences that exemplify the syntactic alternations allowed and disallowed for that verb, the classifter will provide appropriate linguistic hypotheses. Third, the classifier can identify the need for new verb classes by flagging verbs that are not members of any existing, defined verb classes. Together, these functions provide tools for the lexical semanticist that are potentially very useful.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> The second and third of these three functions can be provided in two steps: (1) classifying each alternation for a particular verb according to the type of semantic mapping allowed for the verb and its arguments; and (2) either identifying the verb class that has the given pattern of classified alternations or using the pattern to form the definition of a new verb class.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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