Paper ID: 2305.19650

Adverbs, Surprisingly

Dmitry Nikolaev, Collin F. Baker, Miriam R. L. Petruck, Sebastian Padó

This paper begins with the premise that adverbs are neglected in computational linguistics. This view derives from two analyses: a literature review and a novel adverb dataset to probe a state-of-the-art language model, thereby uncovering systematic gaps in accounts for adverb meaning. We suggest that using Frame Semantics for characterizing word meaning, as in FrameNet, provides a promising approach to adverb analysis, given its ability to describe ambiguity, semantic roles, and null instantiation.

Submitted: May 31, 2023