Automatically Acquiring Natural Language Expressions Representing Preparation and Utilization of an Object

Abstract

This paper proposes an automatic acquisition method for preparation roles and utilization roles, which are analogues of agentive and telic roles in Generative Lexicon Theory. Utilization roles roughly express the purpose and function of a given object, and are defined as paraphrases of expressions such as “using an object” or “enjoying an object.” A preparation role of an object is defined as an expression referring to a part of the preparation process to achieve the utilization roles of an object. We regard “reading a book” as a utilizarion role of the book, and regard “buying a book” or “opening a book” as preparation roles. We developed a method to acquire these roles for Japanese according to the assumptions that utilization roles and preparation roles can be characterized in terms of co-occurrence frequencies and that preparation roles and utilization roles of an object are likely to be preparation roles and utilization roles of other objects. We expect that the acquired roles are useful in various inferences, such as plan recognition, by intelligent agents.