Combining Event Semantics and Degree Semantics for Natural Language Inference

Izumi Haruta, Koji Mineshima, Daisuke Bekki

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

In formal semantics, there are two well-developed semantic frameworks: event semantics, which treats verbs and adverbial modifiers using the notion of event, and degree semantics, which analyzes adjectives and comparatives using the notion of degree. However, it is not obvious whether these frameworks can be combined to handle cases in which the phenomena in question are interacting with each other. Here, we study this issue by focusing on natural language inference (NLI). We implement a logic-based NLI system that combines event semantics and degree semantics and their interaction with lexical knowledge. We evaluate the system on various NLI datasets containing linguistically challenging problems. The results show that the system achieves high accuracies on these datasets in comparison with previous logic-based systems and deep-learning-based systems. This suggests that the two semantic frameworks can be combined consistently to handle various combinations of linguistic phenomena without compromising the advantage of either framework.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationCOLING 2020 - 28th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the Conference
EditorsDonia Scott, Nuria Bel, Chengqing Zong
PublisherAssociation for Computational Linguistics (ACL)
Pages1758-1764
Number of pages7
ISBN (Electronic)9781952148279
Publication statusPublished - 2020
Event28th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, COLING 2020 - Virtual, Online, Spain
Duration: 2020 Dec 82020 Dec 13

Publication series

NameCOLING 2020 - 28th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the Conference

Conference

Conference28th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, COLING 2020
Country/TerritorySpain
CityVirtual, Online
Period20/12/820/12/13

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Science Applications
  • Computational Theory and Mathematics
  • Theoretical Computer Science

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Combining Event Semantics and Degree Semantics for Natural Language Inference'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this