Abstract meaning representation for MWE : a study of the mapping of aspectuality based on Mandarin light verb jiayi

Abstract

Multiword expression (MWE) refers to various types of linguistic units that are made up of more than one word. Light verb constructions (LVCs), as one of the least explored areas in MWEs, have idiosyncratic features that are difficult to capture in computational linguistics. In this paper, we addressed the aspectual differences between LVCs and their corresponding regular verb constructions with corpus data. Specifically, the jiayiLVC in Mandarin Chinese was investigated as a case study, where idiosyncratic aspectual information in the LVC was proposed. This feature was not yet previously represented in abstract meaning representation (AMR), in which LVCs and its regular verb counterparts shared the same AMR. Given the semantic difference in jiayi-LVCs, we expand AMR by introducing aspect as the root node, while maintaining the core predicative component in meaning representation.