I looked at some sentences to understand their logic. Like with much of AMR, I think quantification is not about quantifier words (“all”, “most”, “many”), or determiners, or plurals, or generics. Rather, we just: (1) read the sentence, (2) think about what it means, and (3) type that in. This is not a proposal on practical annotation right now! But I would like to think more & look at data.
Here’s an example (PROXY_AFP_ENG_20040203_0804.10, snt. 28 in proxy-19-wset-7):
Most affected Asian countries (c) have banned (b) the import and export (a2) of live and slaughtered poultry (a6) to prevent (p2) the movement (m2) of potentially infected (i2) chickens and ducks (a4) across borders (b2).
(the AMR is at the end of this handout)
Legend for below:
E= there exists, A = for all, M = for most
Currently: Ec Eb Ea2 Ea6 Ep2 Em2 Ei2 Eb2 Ea4
“There exists a most-country, and there exists a single banning event, and there exists a single import/export event, and there exists a single chicken, and there exists a single prevention event … such that the country bans that (single) import/export event of that (single) chicken …”
Quite a limited ban :)
Logically: Mc Eb Aa2 Aa6 Ep2 Am2 Ab2 Aa4 Ei2
“For most countries, there exists a (separate) ban on all import/export events of all chickens, for the purpose of a (single) existing prevention of all movements, across all (their) borders, of all chickens and ducks for which there exists an infection.”
It is logically compact to drop negations (“-“) into the sequence, e.g.:
Mc - Eb Aa2 Aa6 Ep2 Am2 Ab2 Aa4 Ei2 (For most countries, there is no complete ban…)
Mc Eb - Aa2 Aa6 Ep2 Am2 Ab2 Aa4 Ei2 (For most countries, there is an incomplete ban…)
Mc Eb Aa2 Aa6 Ep2 Am2 Ab2 Aa4 - Ei2 (…movements of all uninfected chickens/ducks…)
English can be rough here, because many expressions in compact logical space do not have felicitous English expressions -- that’s a feature! Lawyers work out the logic, then realize it with sometimes-tortured English. Anyway, this is not an issue for us, since we translate English to AMR.
It’s not clear what negation on Mx means:
Ag Ec (All girls have a car) Mg Ec (Most girls have a car)
- Ag Ec (It’ not true all girls have a car) - Mg Ec (It’s not true most girls have a car)
Ag - Ec (No girls have a car) Mg - Ec (For most girls, they have no car)
All three different meanings. These last two seem to mean the same thing.
(b / ban-01
:ARG0 (c / country
:location (c2 / continent :wiki "Asia"
:name (n / name :op1 "Asia"))
:ARG1-of (a / affect-01)
:quant (m / most))
:ARG1 (a2 / and
:op1 (i / import-01
:ARG0 c
:ARG1 (a6 / and
:op1 (p / poultry
:ARG0-of (l / live-01))
:op2 (p4 / poultry
:ARG1-of (s / slaughter-01))))
:op2 (e / export-01
:ARG0 c
:ARG1 a6))
:purpose (p2 / prevent-01
:ARG0 c
:ARG1 (m2 / move-01
:ARG1 (a4 / and
:op1 (c3 / chicken)
:op2 (d / duck)
:ARG1-of (i2 / infect-01
:mod (p3 / potential)))
:ARG2 (a5 / across
:op1 (b2 / border)))))
Quantification in AMR
I looked at some sentences to understand their logic. Like with much of AMR, I think quantification is not about quantifier words (“all”, “most”, “many”), or determiners, or plurals, or generics. Rather, we just: (1) read the sentence, (2) think about what it means, and (3) type that in. This is not a proposal on practical annotation right now! But I would like to think more & look at data.
Here’s an example (PROXY_AFP_ENG_20040203_0804.10, snt. 28 in proxy-19-wset-7):
Most affected Asian countries (c) have banned (b) the import and export (a2) of live and slaughtered poultry (a6) to prevent (p2) the movement (m2) of potentially infected (i2) chickens and ducks (a4) across borders (b2). (the AMR is at the end of this handout)
Legend for below:
E= there exists, A = for all, M = for most
Currently: Ec Eb Ea2 Ea6 Ep2 Em2 Ei2 Eb2 Ea4
“There exists a most-country, and there exists a single banning event, and there exists a single import/export event, and there exists a single chicken, and there exists a single prevention event … such that the country bans that (single) import/export event of that (single) chicken …”
Logically: Mc Eb Aa2 Aa6 Ep2 Am2 Ab2 Aa4 Ei2
“For most countries, there exists a (separate) ban on all import/export events of all chickens, for the purpose of a (single) existing prevention of all movements, across all (their) borders, of all chickens and ducks for which there exists an infection.”
It is logically compact to drop negations (“-“) into the sequence, e.g.:
Mc - Eb Aa2 Aa6 Ep2 Am2 Ab2 Aa4 Ei2 (For most countries, there is no complete ban…) Mc Eb - Aa2 Aa6 Ep2 Am2 Ab2 Aa4 Ei2 (For most countries, there is an incomplete ban…) Mc Eb Aa2 Aa6 Ep2 Am2 Ab2 Aa4 - Ei2 (…movements of all uninfected chickens/ducks…)
English can be rough here, because many expressions in compact logical space do not have felicitous English expressions -- that’s a feature! Lawyers work out the logic, then realize it with sometimes-tortured English. Anyway, this is not an issue for us, since we translate English to AMR.
It’s not clear what negation on Mx means: