The Construction of Mandarin VerbNet: A Frame-based Study of Statement Verbs

This paper introduces the infrastructure and the principles of a semantic framework used for the analysis and classification of verbs, developed with the aim of constructing a lexical database of Mandarin verbal semantics, called the Mandarin VerbNet. Distinct from most existing lexical databases that enumerate word senses without detailed grammatical considerations, the Mandarin VerbNet is designed to provide lexical semantic information based on grammatical descriptions and anchored in linguistic theories. It looks for systematic correlations between syntax and semantics and classifies verbs according to these syntax-to-semantics correspondences. The framework adopts the approach of Frame Semantics (Fillmore & Atkins 1992) in defining verb meanings in a semantic frame and building a frame-based verbal lexicon, but it differs from the structure of the English FrameNet in distinguishing different scopes of frames. Evolved and refined from previous works (Liu, Chiang & Chang 2004, Liu & Wu 2003, Liu 2002), this study summarizes the current model of the analytic framework with a detailed illustration from Mandarin statement verbs. It ultimately seeks to identify a theoretically sound and operationally effective representational scheme that bases its semantic analysis on grammatical behaviors and provides linguistic motivations for its semantic classifications.