Veridicity annotation in the lexicon? A look at factive adjectives
Annie Zaenen, Lauri Karttunen · 2013
In this note, we look at the factors that influence veridicity judgments with factive predicates. We show that more context factors play a role than is generally assumed. We propose to use crowd sourcing techniques to understand these factors better and briefly discuss the consequences for the association of lexical signatures with items in the lexicon. 1 Veridicity: what and why Recognizing the inferential properties of constructions and of lexical items is important for NLU (Natural Language Understanding) systems. In this paper we look at FACTUAL INFERENCES, inferences that allow the reader to conclude that an event has happened or will happen or that a state of affairs pertains or will pertain. We will refer to events and states together as SOAs. Factuality is in the world and outside of the text. In cases where the reader has no direct perceptual knowledge about the SOAs, she has to evaluate the factuality of a SOA referred to in a text based on her decoding of the author’s representation of the factuality of the SOA and on her knowledge about the world and about the author’s reliability. Authors have a plethora of means to signal whether they want to present SOAs as factual, as having happened or going to happen or as being more or less probable, possible, unlikely or not factual at all. We will call this presentation of a SOA the VERIDICITY of a SOA. We will call the reader’s interpretation of the author’s intention, the RIV (READER INFERRED VERIDICITY) and the reader judgment about the factuality of a SOA, RIF