nschneid
commented
6 years ago @dotdv that makes more sense.
Quoting the FrameNet guidelines (2016 edition):
p. 52:
One special kind of noun that received Gov-X annotation are what we call transparent nouns. Nouns like top, pound, bunch can appear as the first noun in N1-of-N2 constructions in contexts where the governing verb semantically selects N2 rather than N1, the syntactic head. In these contexts, we call N1 transparent.
(162) Sue drank a cup of hot coffee. (163) He pinned a square of fabric on the back.
(164) She went to see her idiot of a husband.Semantically, the nouns that can be transparent fall into the following classes:
- Aggregates (bunch, group, collection)
- Quantities (flood, number, scores)
- Types (breed, class, ilk, kind)
- Portions and Parts (half, segment, top, bottom)
- Unitizers (glass, bottle, box)
- Evaluations (gem, idiot)
p. 88:
LUs marked as transparent nouns have an unusual sort of semantics since, unlike most nouns, their primary function is to give some kind of description of another noun....
The FrameNet team views recognition of these LUs as vital for correct cataloging of FE fillers, summarization, paraphrase, etc. since they violate the default rule that the syntactic head of a phrase is the semantic head. For many purposes, transparent nouns can simply be omitted from the analysis of a sentence.
However, note that transparent nouns are not always transparent. In the right semantic contexts, they are so to speak “opaque” and dominate the frame of their dependent (as most targets do); in such cases the meaning of the so-called transparent noun itself rather than that of its dependent is selected by a predicator. In particular, this is the case with governing predicates that evoke an open proposition or question, e.g. determine, consider, measure, etc.
(14) Archaeologists have been determining the number/shape/part/type of tools used by the Maya.
Here none of the transparent nouns can be used with quite the same meaning as that of the described entity alone:
(15) Archaeologists have been determining the tools used by the Maya.
In addition, transparent nouns convey important, if optional, information like quantity and configuration. For tasks concerned with these dimensions of meaning, transparent nouns should be treated like any other target.
omriabnd
Nathan's comment from the guidelines: \nss{Then how to distinguish
I bought bicycle spokes' fromI bought a bicycle with spokes'? These are quite different meanings. I'm not sure a uniform treatment of part-whole relations across paraphrases is possible in the foundational layer without sacrificing other things.}I agree. Omri correct me if I'm wrong but I think the intention of this guideline wasn't to refer to cases where it's very clear what the center should be (e.g I bought [a [bike]_C [with spokes]_E] and actually also 'I bought [bicycle_E spokes_C]_A') but rather to deal with cases like: I ate [a piece of cake] where one could argue that both 'cake' and 'piece' can answer "what did John eat" and therefore can both be Cs. So first I think that this section requires that we give whole scenes as examples and also that we clarify what are the types of cases we are referring to
Personally in 'piece of cake' my intuitive response would have been to mark the part rather than the whole as the C (e.g 'piece' as the C in the example above ). And also in other examples: As ship was found [at_R the_E bottom_C of_R [the sea]_E]_A [two_Q puzzle_E pieces_C]_A are missing