Annotating Dynamic Verbs

While all superframes denote states, many predicates, especially verbs, do not simply denote a state. Rather, they denote an event.

Note

We refer to events and states collectively as eventualities or scenes for short.

Events are distinguished from states by their temporal structure. They progress through two or more stages, each of which is itself a state or, in fact, another event.

In Superframes, events are annotated using a number of special frames called aspectual frames. You first frame a stage (which is usually a state), and then you add an aspectual frame that indicates that the predicate evokes not the stage, but an event involving the stage. There are seven aspectual frames:

Note

The frame for the stage is combined with the aspectual frame through a mechanism called stacking. We stack the aspectual frame on top of the stage frame by writing the two separated by a hyphen, meaning that the stage frame becomes the first argument of the aspectual frame. The first frame (also called the base frame) still determines the core roles that can be used.

Here is the mechanism illustrated for three different aspectual frames using POSSESSION as stage frame:

And here it is illustrated for all the aspectual frames using LOCATION as stage frame:

Further examples include:

Stacking Aspectual Frames Onto Roles

Some predicates take multiple arguments wrt. different stages. 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

For predicates that only express aspect and nothing about the stage (which is instead denoted by an argument), aspectual frames can be used by themselves, without stacking:

Using Aspectual Frames with the META Frame

Some predicates share an argument with another argument in what is known as a control construction. They are annotated with the special META frame. Its scene role is filled by the embedded predicate, and its participant role is filled by the controlled argument.

Important

If a predicate has a participant and a scene dependent, then an additional dependency edge (not present in basic UD) must be present from the scene to the participant. This edge is called a backlink. This rule is enforced automatically by the checker.

Often, control predicates express aspect while the embedded predicate expresses a stage. Thus, stack an aspect frame onto META. For example: