Inconsistency: "always" as :time but "often" as :frequency

[nschneid]

Each decision seems fairly consistent in the corpus. But it seems like "always" describes a frequency.

[nschneid]

From searching the release data:

• always: :time always
• often: mix of :frequency often and :time often
• sometimes: mix of :frequency sometimes and :time sometimes
• seldom (2 tokens): :frequency seldom
• never: :polarity - :time ever
• usually: mix of :mod usual and :frequency usual
• rarely: :ARG1-of rare-02
• frequently: :ARG1-of frequent-02
• regularly: :ARG1-of regular-02
• occasionally: mix of :frequency occasional and :time occasional
• sporadically (1 token): :frequency sporadic

[nschneid]

Relatedly:

• every time: mix of rate-entity-91, :frequency time :mod every, :time every
• each time: mix of rate-entity-91, :frequency time :mod each, :time time :mod each

[uhermjakob]

I think that always and sometimes/often are somewhat different.

While sometimes and often are a strong match to the question How often?, always more strongly matches the question When? * Tanks are always dangerous. * How often are tanks dangerous? (more weird IMO) * When are tanks dangerous? (less weird IMO)

:time as single time interval: * in 2016 (closed time interval) * until 2016 (half open time interval) * always (open time interval)

Other examples where always does not match How often? very well: * We can always hope. * I have always been very introverted. * She has always lived in China. * He always helped me when I needed his help.

One could of course argue that always implies once but I think that always carries much more information than once.

In the past, annotation of always has not always been fully consistent in the AMR corpus, with annotators using :time always, :mod always and :frequency always. Of these, :time always has been the most common annotation, and :frequency always the least common.

Now, the AMR Checker and the AMR auto repair scripts make sure that always is consistently annotated as :time always.

[nschneid]

Hmm, good point that "How often?" is not always a natural question for "always". OTOH, I'm not sure "When?" is natural, either.

For "Tanks are always dangerous", without context, I think the most natural question would be "Which tanks are dangerous?" (All of them.)

For "We can always hope", "She has always lived in China", etc., I wonder if :duration would be better??

[nschneid]

Regarding the variation in annotations for "often", "sometimes", etc.: Do you think these reflect principled distinctions, or could they all be mapped to :frequency?

[nschneid]

(added "seldom", "regularly", "sporadically" to the list above)

[kevincrawfordknight]

Some inconsistency in annotated data -- need some guidelines and/or AMR checker enforcement.

[nschneid]

The naacl-tutorial sentence that prompted this: "The executions are often public and almost always by hanging ." A bit weird to say :frequency often but :time always, since they have parallel roles in the sentence.