Towards Verifying Semantic Roles Co-occurrence

TL;DR

This paper investigates the co-occurrence of semantic roles in verb representations, revealing hidden restrictions on role combinations through analysis of VerbNet, which impacts semantic role theory and NLP applications.

Contribution

It introduces an evidence-based approach to identify restrictions on semantic role co-occurrence using VerbNet data, challenging the assumption of universal role combinations.

Findings

Semantic roles co-occur in verb representations.

Hidden restrictions on role combinations are identified.

Implications for semantic role theory and NLP are discussed.

Abstract

Semantic role theory considers roles as a small universal set of unanalyzed entities. It means that formally there are no restrictions on role combinations. We argue that the semantic roles co-occur in verb representations. It means that there are hidden restrictions on role combinations. To demonstrate that a practical and evidence-based approach has been built on in-depth analysis of the largest verb database VerbNet. The consequences of this approach are considered.