Discourse Connective instead-of-91

[uhermjakob]

This issue follows up on the "instead of connectives" section of issue #112. (Note: I wrote this before I read Tim's related new #113.)

I agree with the core of Tim's proposal regarding "instead of etc." but I would propose to use a semantically more neutral frame name such as instead-of-91 instead of replace-alternative-91 or :prep-instead-of, which contains a mortifyingly syntactic prep.

instead-of-91
   :ARG1 this
   :ARG2 instead of that

Note: ARG2 has an implied negative polarity. Note: There is also typically an implication that there was some (counter-factual) expectation for ARG2.

:instead-of could be an AMR Editor shortcut for instead-of-91.

I think that for semantic clarity, we will need to include frame duplication in cases such as:

# ::snt Tim gave the book to Martha instead of Claire.
(g / give-01 
  :ARG0 (p / person :name (n / name :op1 "Tim"))
  :ARG1 (b / book)
  :ARG2 (p2 / person :name (n2 / name :op1 "Martha"))
  :ARG1-of (i / instead-of-91
             :ARG2 (g2 / give-01
                     :ARG0 p
                     :ARG1 b
                     :ARG2 (p3 / person :name (n3 / name :op1 "Claire")))))

In other cases, the "alternative" frame will be different anyway, as in:

# ::snt Tim went for an early morning bike ride instead of sleeping in.
(r / ride-01 
  :ARG0 (p / person :name (n / name :op1 "Tim"))
  :ARG1 (b / bike)
  :time (e / early
          :op1 (d / date-entity
                 :dayperiod (m / morning)))
  :ARG1-of (i / instead-of-91
             :ARG2 (s / sleep-00
                     :ARG0 p)))

As Tim pointed out, some sentences have the structure "not A, but instead B". That's semantically equivalent to "B instead of A", and I actually find it cleaner to raise the syntactic subordinate "but instead B" to be the "semantic main clause", as in:

# ::snt Job creation is not expected to slow down but will instead accelerate.
(e / expect-01
  :ARG1 (a / accelerate-01
          :ARG1 (c / create-01
                  :ARG1 (j / job))
          :ARG1-of (i / instead-of-91
                     :ARG2 (s / slow-03
                             :ARG1 c))))

This would also make life much easier for Tim's most complicated case:

Upon his return to Beijing, the situation in Urumqi was far from settling, 
instead the Uyghur terrorists becoming even more rampant, 
and the numbers of attacks and bombings were increasing rather than decreasing!

For that sentence, I would propose the following top-level structure:

(a / and
  :op1 (i / instead-of-91
         :ARG1 (b / become-01)
         :ARG2 (s / settle-01))
  :op2 (i2 / instead-of-91
          :ARG1 (i3 / increase-01)
          :ARG2 (d / decrease-01))
  :time (r / return-01))

Semantically subordinating settle-01 naturally confers a negative polarity. And raising instead-of-91 will naturally apply :time return-01 to all of become-01/not_settle-01/increase-01/not_decrease-01, which I think it should.

I agree with Tim that there should be a separate listing for rather and that besides a section and example for instead-of-91 it needs to include one for the meaning prefer-01 as well.

And finally, I have one more donation for the set of surface forms covered by instead-of-91:

• instead (of)
• rather (than)
• in lieu of
• as opposed to

[nschneid]

Regarding frame duplication—shouldn't we be consistent with current conventions for "or"? For "Tim gave the book to Martha or Claire," we prefer a single frame: (g / give-01 ... :ARG2 (o / or :op1 [Martha] :op2 [Claire])), even though it could be written more verbosely as (o / or :op1 (g / give-01 ... :ARG2 [Martha]) :op2 (g2 / give-01 ... :ARG2 [Claire])).

[uhermjakob]

instead-of-91 adopted during AMR phone meeting on April 29, 2014, as proposed by Ulf above (based at its core on Tim's proposal).

Additional surface form: in place of

Topic added to AMR Annotation Dictionary.