Investigating Regular Sense Extensions Based on Intersective Levin Classes

In this paper we speciically address questions of polysemy with respect to verbs, and how regular extensions of meaning can be achieved through the adjunction of particular syntactic phrases. We see verb classes as the key to making generalizations about regular extensions of meaning. Current approaches to English classiica-tion, Levin classes and WordNet, have limitations in their applicability that impede their utility as general classiication schemes. We present a reenement of Levin classes, intersec-tive sets, which are a more ne-grained clas-siication and have more coherent sets of syntactic frames and associated semantic components. We have preliminary indications that the membership of our intersective sets will be more compatible with WordNet than the original Levin classes. We also have begun to examine related classes in Portuguese, and nd that these verbs demonstrate similarly coherent syntactic and semantic properties.