We (Yushi Zhao and I) evaluated 25 sentences that resorted to using “:prep-on”. While many can be fixed with a change/clarification to the annotation guidelines, approximately half appear to be either annotation errors or relatively isolated cases.
Major
:manner (~28%)
Many of the :prep-on cases describe the manner of how actions are done, sometimes metaphorically. For instance,
“Also,to use an old cliche..."I would rather die on my feet then live on my knees"
The prepositional phrases belong to larger VP constituents and modify the main verbs, die and live. However, the speaker does not literally die on his feet or live on his knees, but rather expresses his faith in himself and unwillingness to conform to others.
Another examples will be:
“I'm pretty much non-autistic (not diagnosed with dyspraxia but I think the doctor misdiagnosed), but I walk on my toes nearly all of the time.”
In this case, “on my toes” should be interpreted more literally given the context. We classify it into :manner because we would be able to substitute the preposition phrase with an adverb if there existed such an adverb in English. Since many adverbs that modify action verbs are categorized into :manner, “on my toes” should be a case of :manner.
“The law of return gives Jewish people and those who half Jewish on their mother's side the right to become Israeli citizens.”
Similarly, “on their mother’s side” adds more information to the adjective “jewish”, and thus the preposition phrase is an adjective modifier. Since adverbs are used to modify adjectives, “on their mother’s side” should be treated as an adverb, and therefore takes the feature of an adverb.
:topic (~20%)
We propose the addition of “on” to the “:topic” section of the dict for cases like this:
“Resolution on Syria”
“A thread on everything related to the 2012 election”
These are generally situations where “on” could be replaced with “about”. This is not always the case, though. For instance:
“The ceiling on government debt.”
:extent (~8%)
We also see a few cases where speakers use :prep-on to express extent or degree. For instance:
“Ron Paul is right on every level but the mainstream media does not want him to get as much talk time as other Puppets such as Rick Santo rum and Mitt Romney”
I think a good strategy to test if a phrase can be treated as :extent is by asking the question “how well/much/(adj of your choice)…?” or “To what extent…?”
“To what degree is Ron Paul right?”
“On every level”
Furthermore, If somebody is “right on every level”, a paraphrase would be “totally right”. We propose using :extent for situations similar to this.
Consider the following sentence:
“How on earth is this fair?”
We know that the Wh-phase “how” is base generated to modify the adjective “fair”, so “how” should take the feature of an adverb. Then “on earth” may be a modifier for the adverbial Wh-word “how”. We think that the function of this preposition phrase would be similar to a :mod, but since the phrase expresses an extent, we categorize it into :extent.
Tricky / Individual / Miscellaneous
:argX (~20%)
We found many annotation examples that use :prep-on despite adequate PropBank arguments available. For instance,
“It is to the great, abiding shame of women and blacks to turn their backs on the great achievements of these people.”
correctly uses turn-18 (turn one’s back), but doesn’t make use of :arg2 (entity ignored)
Another example is,
“They evidently are quite angry that they don't have much money and therfore take their anger out on other races and point the blame on them...”
which uses take-out-11 (obtain) instead of take-out-26 (project anger), which has :arg2 (person anger is projected on)
Redundant uses (~12%)
Some cases can simply remove the use of :prep-on because the semantic relationship is already expressed. For instance,
“with a frozen grin on your face”
uses :prep-on like this:
:manner (g / grin-01
:prep-on (f / face
:part-of y / you)
:ARG1-of (f2 / freeze-01))
when a reasonable paraphrase is:
:manner (g / grin-01
:ARG0: (y / you)
:ARG1-of (f2 / freeze-01))
have-org-role-91 (~4%)
The phrase “journalist on the panel” was represented as:
(j / journalist
:prep-on (p2 / panel))
rather than:
(j / journalist
:ARG0-of (h / have-org-role-91
:ARG1: (p / panel)))
have-on (~4%)
It seems like a new frame have-on-91 could be useful to handle situations like this: “I had a list of items I knew I had on me”. This is more specific than to simply own/possess (have-03) because it implies that the item is currently in the person’s immediate possession; using have-03 in this situation would merge the meaning of this sentence and “I had a list of items I knew I had”, which means something different.
Idioms (~4%)
There are still cases that use idioms that do not otherwise seem to fit well into existing categories. For instance: “offered him sex on a plate”. We propose leaving these cases as is.
nschneid
commented
7 years ago
We (Yushi Zhao and I) evaluated 25 sentences that resorted to using “:prep-on”. While many can be fixed with a change/clarification to the annotation guidelines, approximately half appear to be either annotation errors or relatively isolated cases.
Major
:manner (~28%)
Many of the :prep-on cases describe the manner of how actions are done, sometimes metaphorically. For instance, “Also,to use an old cliche..."I would rather die on my feet then live on my knees" The prepositional phrases belong to larger VP constituents and modify the main verbs, die and live. However, the speaker does not literally die on his feet or live on his knees, but rather expresses his faith in himself and unwillingness to conform to others.
Another examples will be: “I'm pretty much non-autistic (not diagnosed with dyspraxia but I think the doctor misdiagnosed), but I walk on my toes nearly all of the time.” In this case, “on my toes” should be interpreted more literally given the context. We classify it into :manner because we would be able to substitute the preposition phrase with an adverb if there existed such an adverb in English. Since many adverbs that modify action verbs are categorized into :manner, “on my toes” should be a case of :manner.
“The law of return gives Jewish people and those who half Jewish on their mother's side the right to become Israeli citizens.” Similarly, “on their mother’s side” adds more information to the adjective “jewish”, and thus the preposition phrase is an adjective modifier. Since adverbs are used to modify adjectives, “on their mother’s side” should be treated as an adverb, and therefore takes the feature of an adverb.
:topic (~20%)
We propose the addition of “on” to the “:topic” section of the dict for cases like this: “Resolution on Syria” “A thread on everything related to the 2012 election” These are generally situations where “on” could be replaced with “about”. This is not always the case, though. For instance: “The ceiling on government debt.”
:extent (~8%)
We also see a few cases where speakers use :prep-on to express extent or degree. For instance: “Ron Paul is right on every level but the mainstream media does not want him to get as much talk time as other Puppets such as Rick Santo rum and Mitt Romney” I think a good strategy to test if a phrase can be treated as :extent is by asking the question “how well/much/(adj of your choice)…?” or “To what extent…?”
Consider the following sentence: “How on earth is this fair?” We know that the Wh-phase “how” is base generated to modify the adjective “fair”, so “how” should take the feature of an adverb. Then “on earth” may be a modifier for the adverbial Wh-word “how”. We think that the function of this preposition phrase would be similar to a :mod, but since the phrase expresses an extent, we categorize it into :extent.
Tricky / Individual / Miscellaneous
:argX (~20%)
We found many annotation examples that use :prep-on despite adequate PropBank arguments available. For instance, “It is to the great, abiding shame of women and blacks to turn their backs on the great achievements of these people.” correctly uses turn-18 (turn one’s back), but doesn’t make use of :arg2 (entity ignored)
Another example is, “They evidently are quite angry that they don't have much money and therfore take their anger out on other races and point the blame on them...” which uses take-out-11 (obtain) instead of take-out-26 (project anger), which has :arg2 (person anger is projected on)
Redundant uses (~12%)
Some cases can simply remove the use of :prep-on because the semantic relationship is already expressed. For instance, “with a frozen grin on your face” uses :prep-on like this: :manner (g / grin-01 :prep-on (f / face :part-of y / you) :ARG1-of (f2 / freeze-01)) when a reasonable paraphrase is: :manner (g / grin-01 :ARG0: (y / you) :ARG1-of (f2 / freeze-01))
have-org-role-91 (~4%)
The phrase “journalist on the panel” was represented as: (j / journalist :prep-on (p2 / panel)) rather than: (j / journalist :ARG0-of (h / have-org-role-91 :ARG1: (p / panel)))
have-on (~4%)
It seems like a new frame have-on-91 could be useful to handle situations like this: “I had a list of items I knew I had on me”. This is more specific than to simply own/possess (have-03) because it implies that the item is currently in the person’s immediate possession; using have-03 in this situation would merge the meaning of this sentence and “I had a list of items I knew I had”, which means something different.
Idioms (~4%)
There are still cases that use idioms that do not otherwise seem to fit well into existing categories. For instance: “offered him sex on a plate”. We propose leaving these cases as is.