Unit IV Predicate Argument Structure
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k swayamprabhaUnit IV Predicate Argument Structure
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k swayamprabhaR22 JNTUH SYLLABUS FOR CSE
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K SWAYAM PRABHA
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Predicate-Argument Structure (PAS)
Predicate-Argument Structure (PAS) is a core concept in Natural Language
Processing (NLP) that aims to extract the semantic meaning of an event
described in a sentence. It answers the fundamental questions of "who did what
to whom, when, and where."
The goal is to move beyond the superficial syntax (grammar) and capture the
deeper semantics (meaning) by identifying three key components:
1. The Predicate
The Predicate is the central element that describes the action, event, or state
in the sentence. It is almost always the main verb.
Example: In the sentence, "The programmer wrote the code quickly," the
predicate is "wrote."
2. The Arguments
The Arguments are the entities, objects, or phrases that participate in the event
defined by the predicate. These are the participants—the nouns and noun
phrases associated with the verb.
Example: For the predicate "wrote," the arguments are "The
programmer" and "the code."
3. Semantic Roles (or Thematic Roles)
A Semantic Role defines the specific function or relationship an argument has
to the predicate. This is where the true meaning lies, as it's often consistent even
if the sentence structure changes.
Agent: The instigator or conscious performer of the action.
Example: The programmer (Agent) wrote the code.
Theme/Patient: The entity that is directly affected, changed, or acted
upon.
Example: The programmer wrote the code (Theme).
Instrument: The object used to perform the action.
Example: He fixed the machine with a wrench (Instrument).
Location: The place where the event occurs.
Example: They met in the lab (Location).
PAS Example: Active vs. Passive Voice
PAS is powerful because it allows a system to assign the same meaning to
sentences that have different grammatical structures.
Active Voice: "Alice (Agent) kicked (Predicate) the ball (Theme)."
PAS: KICKED(textAgent: textAlice, textTheme: textthe ball)
Passive Voice: "The ball (Theme) was kicked (Predicate) by Alice (Agent)."
PAS: KICKED(textAgent: textAlice, textTheme: textthe ball)
Notice how both sentences map to the identical Predicate-Argument Structure.
This canonical form is what the computer uses to understand the underlying
event.
Applications
Understanding PAS is crucial because it is the semantic foundation for several
modern NLP technologies:
1. Information Extraction (IE)
PAS allows systems to convert unstructured text into structured, database-ready
facts. By identifying the predicate and its semantic roles, the system can fill the
slots of a knowledge base. For instance, from the text "Jeff Bezos founded
Amazon in 1994," the system extracts the structured fact: FOUNDED(textAgent:
textJeff Bezos, textTheme: textAmazon, textTime: 1994) .
2. Question Answering (QA) Systems
When you ask a question like "Who invented the light bulb?", the QA system
first converts it into a PAS with a missing argument: INVENTED(textAgent:
textbf?, textTheme: textlight bulb) . It then queries its knowledge base for the
entity that fills the missing Agent role for that specific event.
3. Machine Translation (MT)
By analyzing the semantic roles of the source sentence, MT systems can ensure
that the core meaning is preserved in the target language, even if the
grammatical word order is different. This prevents errors where an Agent might
incorrectly become a Theme during translation.
4. Semantic Role Labeling (SRL)
SRL is the computational task of automatically identifying the predicate and
assigning semantic roles to all arguments in a sentence. Tools based on SRL (like
PropBank and FrameNet) are widely used in Python and other NLP libraries to
provide rich, structured annotations for text data.
What are Meaning Representation Systems (MRS)?
An MRS must meet several key requirements to be useful for computers:
Unambiguous: A sentence with a single meaning must map to only one
representation.
Canonical: Sentences that mean the same thing (e.g., "The cat chased the
mouse" and "The mouse was chased by the cat") must map to the same
representation.
Inferential: The representation must allow the computer to perform logical
deductions (e.g., if "Socrates is a man" and "All men are mortal" are true, the
system can infer "Socrates is mortal").
Verifiable: The representation should be checkable against a knowledge base or
the real world to determine its truth or falsehood.
