Using semantic preferences to identify verbal participation in role switching alternations
Diana McCarthy · 2000
We propose a method for identifying diathesis alternations where a particular argument type is seen in slots which have different grammatical roles in the alternating forms. The method uses selectional preferences acquired as probability distributions over WordNet. Preferences for the target slots are compared using a measure of distributional similarity. The method is evaluated on the causative and conative alternations, but is generally applicable and does not require a priori knowledge specific to the alternation. 1 Introduction Diathesis alternations are alternate ways in which the arguments of a verb are expressed syntactically. The syntactic changes are sometimes accompanied by slight changes in the meaning of the verb. An example of the causative alternation is given in (1) below. In this alternation, the object of the transitive variant can also appear as the subject of the intransitive variant. In the conative alternation, the transitive form alternates with a prepositional ...