Annotating Non-core Arguments

So far, we have only seen predicates with at most two arguments, all of whose roles are defined by the (base) frame that the predicate is annotated with. We call the base frame together with any frames stacked on top of it the core frame. But many verbs have more than two arguments, or otherwise arguments with roles from different frames. One very common example is causative subjects, denoting an entity presented as causing the situation denoted by the core frame. For example, consider the following:

In both sentences, the core frame is INTERNAL-STATE-INIT, with the vase as the has-state argument. In the second sentence, Kim is added as another argument, presented as the causer of the situation denoted by the core frame (the breaking of the vase). We thus annotate it with the causer role from the CAUSATION frame. To distinguish them from core arguments, non-core arguments are written in all upper case.

Note

Adding a non-core role is interpreted as implicitly adding the corresponding frame, where the dependent fills the non-core role, and the core frame fills the other role. Thus, in the example, by adding CAUSER as the non-core role, we implicitly add a CAUSATION frame whose causer role is filled by Kim, and whose effect role is filled by the breaking of the vase.

Similar examples include:

Two other very common non-core arguments are the sender and recipients (experiencers) of messages.

Other non-core arguments are usually rather predicate-specific.