:time with :duration and other temporal-quantity

[uhermjakob]

I have observed some inconsistencies for expressions such as

• in 10 years
• in the next 10 years

My proposal:

I will leave in 20 minutes. (This "in" has a different meaning from the "in" in "in September.")

Alternative 1 (annotated in analogy to 20 minutes ago):

(l / leave-01
  :ARG0 (i / i)
  :time (i2 / in
           :op1 (t / temporal-quantity :quant 20
                  :unit (m / minute))))

Alternative 2 (more in sync with the rest of the proposal):

(l / leave-01
  :ARG0 (i / i)
  :time (a / after
          :op1 (n / now)
          :quant (t / temporal-quantity :quant 20
                   :unit (m / minute))))

(If we go with alternative 2, we might want to change our annotation for ago as well, which could be done automatically.)

The police interviewed more than 100 witnesses in the 2 months after the murder.

(i / interview-01
  :ARG0 (p / police)
  :ARG1 (p2 / person
           :ARG0-of (w / witness-01)
           :quant (m3 / more-than :op1 100))
  :time (a / after
          :op1 (m / murder-01)
          :duration (t / temporal-quantity :quant 2
                      :unit (m2 / month))))

The police identified the murderer 2 months after the murder.

(i / identify-01
  :ARG0 (p / police)
  :ARG1 (p2 / person
           :ARG0-of (m / murder-01))
  :time (a / after
          :op1 m
          :quant (t / temporal-quantity :quant 2
                   :unit (m2 / month))))

We have visited Paris twice in the last three years.

(v / visit-01
  :ARG0 (w / we)
  :ARG1 (c / city :name (n / name :op1 "Paris"))
  :frequency 2
  :time (b / before
          :op1 (n2 / now)
          :duration (t / temporal-quantity :quant 3
                      :unit (y / year))))

Similarly: in the next three years (after ...); following three years; previous three years (in some cases leaving :op1 unspecified).

I have seen a number of annotations along the following style:

(v / visit-01 ...
  :time (t / temporal-quantity :quant 3
          :unit (y / year 
                   :mod (l / last))))

which seems somewhat unfortunate because last year is not really a unit of time and because a temporal-quantity is not a good fit for role :time.

[uhermjakob]

At the AMR phone meeting we decided to annotate many temporal expressions using before/after:

• I will leave in 20 minutes. (= 20 minutes after now)
• We have visited Paris twice in the last three years. (= during the 3 years before now)
• Inflation is expected to rise during the next 2 years. (= during the 2 years after now)

More details and full examples: http://www.isi.edu/~ulf/amr/lib/popup/time-before-after.html

Kira points out that this representation is also closer to TIMEX.

Ulf will work on automatically converting old expressions of the form "temporal-quantity ago".

• He retired more than five years ago . (= 5 years before now)