Annotating Nouns and Pronouns

So far, we have only looked at verbal predicates. But nouns can have (core) arguments too. Specifically, this is true for event nouns and relational nouns.

Event nouns are annotated much like verbs:

Relational nouns are not much different, except that they additionally refer to one of the participants in the relation. But we are only concerned with evocation, not with reference.

When used in predicative function in copula clauses, relational nouns assign a role to the subject:

Many nouns, of course, are neither event nouns nor relational nouns, and thus do not have any (core) arguments. The includes proper nouns and is also true for most pronouns. Thus, the rule that we mentioned earlier applies: an occurrence of a predicate without any core arguments is always annotated with the special superframe ENTITY.

Occasionally, pronouns do have arguments. In that case, frame them like you would the antecedent:

When used with a non-event, non-relational noun, the copula construction assigns INSTANCE to the subject if predicative, and SAME if equational (cf. Stassen 1997, p. 100–6; Croft 2022, § 10.1.2):

With adpositions, the copula construction can assign different roles still: