Exploiting verb similarity for event modelling (2020)

Author: Lara Gil Vallejo

Supervisor: Marta Coll-Florit i Irene Castellón 

This thesis aims to explore the potential of verb similarity, and more specifically of verb classifications, when it comes to capturing and modelling basic information related to events expressed in Spanish. The research is based on two studies that examine verb similarity’s ability to model event participant information. We first perform a study of verb similarity with respect to argument structure, looking at its relevant characteristics through the lens of three different perspectives: linguistic theory, corpus linguistics and psycholinguistics. Based on this analysis, we choose the features and configurations to be explored in order to create an automatic classification of verb senses using a clustering algorithm. The aim of this automatic classification is to capture the argument structure of the verbs and apply it to the classifications in a way that allows us to adequately model the participants in the events expressed by those verbs. The evaluations carried out for this verb classification confirm automatic classifications’ ability to capture and infer relevant information related to participants in events.