Abstract
We present an approach that extends Sowa's conceptual graph approach for modelling temporal information found in discourses, thanks to the introduction of the notion of time coordinate systems in the form of agents' perspectives and temporal localizations. Several types of temporal situations (states, events, processes, etc.) may be represented. They are related together and linked to temporal perspectives and localizations by means of temporal relations. We show how these notions may be used to determine verb tenses in a discourse semantically represented by our temporal model. First, we present basic rules to determine verb tenses for independent clauses. Then, we examine how different structures (temporal localizations, temporal objects, etc.) modify these rules. We also consider verb tense determination rules for complex sentences (composed of a main clause and a subordinate clause). Finally, we present a method for applying these verb determination rules to a discourse temporal model.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Bibliography
ALLEN J. F. (1983), Maintaining Knowledge about Temporal Intervals, Communications of the ACM, vol 26 n11.
BINNICK R. I. (1991) Time and the Verb: A guide to Tense and Aspect, Oxford Univ. Press.
COMP-LING (1988) Computational Linguistics, Special Issue on tense and Aspect, vol 14 n 2.
COMRIE B. (1976), Aspect, Cambridge University Press.
COMRIE B. (1985), Tense, Cambridge University Press.
CYRE W. (1993), Acquiring temporal knowledge from schedules, in (Mineau et al. 1993), pp 328–344.
DESCLES J-P. (1989), State, Event, Process and Topology, in General Linguistics, vol 29 n3 pp 161–199, Pensylvania State University Press.
DORFMULLER-KARPUSA K. (1988), Temporal and aspectual relations as text-constitutive elements, in Text and Discourse Constitution, J. S. Petöfi editor, Walter de Gruyter pub.
DUMAS S. (1993), Génération des temps à partir de graphes conceptuels étendus, Mémoire de Maîtrise, Université Laval, Département d'informatique, Déc. 1993.
ESCH J. W. (1992), Temporal intervals, in T. E. Nagle, J.A. Nagle, L. L. Gerholz, P.W. Eklund edts, Conceptual Structures, Ellis Horwood, pp 363–380.
GREVISSE M. (1980), Le bon usage, Duculot, 11ème édition.
HARTLEY R.T. (1992), A uniform representation for time and space and their mutual constraints, in F. Lehmann editor, Semantic Networks in Artificial Intelligence, Pergamon Press.
HAYES P. J. (1985) The second naive physics manifesto, in Formal theories of the Commonsense World, J. Hobbs and R. Moore edts, Ablex, Norwood.
LO CASCIO V. (1986) and C. Vet editors, Temporal Structure in Sentence and Discourse, Foris Pub., Dordrecht.
MINEAU G. W., B. Moulin, J. F. Sowa editors (1993), Conceptual Graphs for Knowledge Representation, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, n 699, Springer Verlag.
MOENS M. (1988), Steedman M., Temporal ontology and temporal reference, in COMP-LING (1988), pp 15–28.
MOULIN B. (1991), Côté D., Representing temporal knowledge in conceptual graphs, Knowledge-Based Systems, vol 4 n 4, December 1991, pp 197–208.
MOULIN B. (1992a), A conceptual graph approach for representing temporal information in discourse, in Knowledge-Based Systems, vol5 n3, pp 183–192.
MOULIN B. (1992b), D. Rousseau, D. Vanderveken, Speech acts in a connected discourse: a computational representation based on conceptual graph theory, in the Journal of Experimental and Theoritical Artificial Intelligence, n.4 pp 149–165.
MOULIN B. (1993a), The representation of linguistic information in an approach used for modelling temporal knowledge in discourses, in (Mineau et al. 1993), pp 182–204.
MOULIN B. (1993b), Representing temporal knowledge in discourse: an approach extending the conceptual graph theory, in H. Pfeiffer, T. Nagle editors, Conceptual Graph: Theory and Implementation, Lecture Notes on Artificial Intelligence, Springer Verlag.
NOGIER J. F. (1991), Génération Automatique de Langage et Graphes Conceptuels, Editions Hermès, Paris, France.
PASSONNEAU R. J. (1988), A computational model of tense and aspect, in (COMP-LING 1988), pp 44–60.
REICHENBACH H. (1947), Elements of Symbolic Logic, McMillan, New-York.
SEARLE J. R. (1985), D. Vanderveken, Foundations of Illocutionary Logic, New York, Cambridge Univ. Press.
SONG F. and R. Cohen (1991), Tense interpretation and the context of narrative, in Proceedings of the Ninth AAAI Conference, pp 131–136.
SOWA J.F. (1984), Conceptual Structures: Information Processing in Mind and Machine, Addison Wesley.
VAN EYNDE F. (1990), The semantics of tense and aspect, in M. Filgueiras, L. Damas, N. Moreira edts, Natural Language Processing, Lecture Notes in AI, n 476, Springer Verlag, pp 158–184.
VENDLER Z. (1967), Verbs and times, in Z. Vendler editor, Linguistics and Philosophy, Ithaca Cornell Univ. Press.
WILLEMS M. (1993), A conceptual semantics ontology for conceptual graphs, in (Mineau et al. 1993), pp 312–327.
ZABLIT P. (1991), Construction de l'interprétation temporelle en langue naturelle: un système fondé sur les graphes conceptuels, Thèse de doctorat, Université Paris Sud-Orsay.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1994 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Moulin, B., Dumas, S. (1994). The temporal structure of a discourse and verb tense determination. In: Tepfenhart, W.M., Dick, J.P., Sowa, J.F. (eds) Conceptual Structures: Current Practices. ICCS 1994. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 835. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-58328-9_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-58328-9_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-58328-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-38675-9
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive