Assigning F rame N et Frames to a C roatian Verb Lexicon (2025)

Abstract: This paper presents the Croatian verb lexicon Verbion that describes verbs on multiple levels. The semantic level includes verb senses, corresponding semantic classes according to VerbNet and WordNet, as well as semantic frames based on FrameNet. Each verb sense is linked to one or more valency frames, which include corpus-based examples accompanied by syntactic, morphological, and semantic analyses of each argument. This study focuses on assigning FrameNet frames to the verb misliti ‘think’ and its prefixed forms. Based on 170 manually annotated sentences, the paper discusses the advantages and challenges of assigning semantic frames to Croatian verbs.

## introduction verbs have been extensively analyzed in various linguistic resources as they are traditionally regarded to be the core element of a sentence. different resources examine different aspects of verbs, focusing on semantics, e.g., wordnet @xcite , framenet @xcite ; both semantics and syntax, e.g., verbnet @xcite , propbank @xcite ; or semantics, syntax, and morphology, e.g., vallex @xcite , walenty @xcite , crovallex (mikelić preradović, 2020), e-glava @xcite , @xcite . despite being developed within different theoretical frameworks, these resources could have benefitted significantly from cross-mapping or linking. for instance, vallex tried to enhance its description by introducing information from framenet @xcite , while the unified verb index integrated links from diverse nlp projects such as verbnet, propbank, framenet, ontonotes @xcite , and the synsemclass lexicon @xcite . due to the lack of such resources for croatian (except wordnet to a certain extent, @xcite , automatic linking is not currently feasible. however, a database is being developed to integrate various approaches and data into a comprehensive verb description. in this paper, we introduce a croatian verb lexicon that describes verbs on several levels (section 2) and, using the verb misliti 'think' and its prefixed forms, i.e. pomisliti 'think, have a thought', razmišljatiimpf/razmislitiperf 'think, think over, ponder', smisliti 'think of, come up with', zamisliti 'imagine, evision', promisliti 'think through, reflect on', and izmisliti 'make up, invent, fabricate', we reflect on the advantages and challenges of applying frame semantics to the description of verbs in croatian (sections 3 and 4). the paper addresses the following key research questions: 1. what are semantic similarities and differences between the croatian verb misliti 'think' and its prefixed forms? 2. are semantic frames from the berkeley framenet applicable to a description of croatian verbs of thinking? as the result of the analysis and annotation of 170 sentences, new semantic frames are introduced in the croatian data, and new lexical units suggested to be added to the existing frames. ## verb lexicon verbion verbion is a croatian verb lexicon that will be publicly available by the end of 2027 through an online search interface offering advanced search options across various linguistic categories. xml data will be made available to researchers upon request for scientific purposes. in the first phase of the project, the 500 most frequent verbs will be described on several levels. on the first level, for each verb, its morphological aspect, an aspectual pair, a morphological block containing different ## methodology to determine verb senses, croatian online dictionaries ( https://hjp.znanje.hr/ ; https://rjecnik.hr/ ) were consulted, as well as web corpora since some senses may be missing from the dictionaries. data for the analysis was extracted from two croatian general language web corpora, hrwac @xcite and classla @xcite , based on manual analysis of random sample of 300 sentences for each analyzed verb. first, concordances had been analyzed in sketch engine @xcite to identify common valency frames for each verb. word sketches were then used to check any potentially missing valency frames in the random sample, as well as regular expressions for more targeted searching. in the second phase, ten sentences per each verb's sense were manually selected and annotated for framenet's semantic frames, applying the berkeley framenet 1.7, which yielded 170 sentences. although annotation was done by two annotators, inter-annotator agreement was not measured at this stage as the focus of the task was to perform qualitative analysis and create guidelines for future annotation work. ## framenet and frames of thinking the verb misliti 'think', as the central member of the category of verbs of thinking, can be used in croatian to express at least four senses: 1. 'to form or have someone or something in mind,' 2. 'to have an opinion about someone or something,' 3. 'to take care of someone or something,' and 4. 'to intend to do something.' the annotation of sentences extracted from corpora showed that these senses can be linked to four semantic frames, i.e. awareness, cogitation, opinion, and regard, but the comparison of croatian senses of the verb think to the different senses of the lexical unit (lu) think in the berkeley framenet shows certain differences in the conceptualization. in croatian, the most frequent sense of the verb, 'to have an opinion about someone or something,' covers two senses of the lu think in framenet: one realized in the frame opinion, and the other in the frame regard. in (1), think evokes the frame opinion as the cognizer (expressed as the 1st person singular form of the verb) holds an opinion of a certain topic, whereas in (2), the cognizer (expressed as the 2nd person plural imperative form of the verb) should be annotated as the frame element (fe) of regard because the cognizer has a judgement of an evaluee. since corpus examples showed that there was no difference in valency patterns in croatian between the two uses of this senseholding an opinion about something or someone and having a judgement -both instances are defined in the verbion database as belonging to the frame opinion. when used in its third sense, 'to take care of someone or something,' the verb misliti 'think' evokes the frame of having concern for someone, as in (3): examples with misliti used in this sense are annotated in the frame purpose, which underlines the role of the agent, although a frame for expressing intent would have been better suited for the meaning. framenet does not list the sense 'plan to do something' for the lu think, although it is confirmed in usage, as in i've been thinking of buying a boat. prefixed verbs related to the verb misliti 'think' align with different frames, showing how prefixes encode subtle semantic distinctions. slavic prefixes modify both the aspect and the semantic focus of the verb. in contrast, english tends to use separate verbs or verb phrases to convey similar nuances @xcite . slavic prefixes are not empty prefixes @xcite ; therefore, they serve as meaning modifiers rather than mere aspect markers, which can be shown in the next examples. the first, canonical sense of the verb misliti 'think', 'to form or have someone or something in mind' (as in mislio sam o tebi. 'i've been thinking about you,') in croatian is commonly expressed with the perfective verb razmišljati 'think, think about, think through, think over, ponder.' both senses evoke the frame cogitation, in which the cognizer thinks about a topic over a period of time. this verb emphasizes duration, intensity and excessiveness of the process of thinking. duration is all the more underlined by the use of the perfective verb like razmišljati. the prefix raztypically signifies a transition of the trajector's state from compact to a dispersed one @xcite . in the context of thinking, this means that thoughts are initially directed towards the object as a whole, and then different aspect or every part of it are thought through. the trajector is broken into smaller parts and analyzed from different angles. cogitation, was also used to annotate the first sense of another prefixed verb, pomisliti 'think, think about, have a thought.' pomisliti can either stand for 1. 'to momentarily form a thought or create an idea that often arises as an initial reaction or intuitive impression about something,' and 2. 'to recall someone or something.' sentences expressing the second sense are annotated using the fes of the frame remembering_experience, but there is no appropriate frame in framenet for the sense of momentarily forming a thought or creating an idea, as in example ( 5 ) and ( 6 ): with the verbs smisliti 'think of, come up with' and izmisliti 'to make up, invent, fabricate,' the process of thinking leads to the creation of an idea. the prefix izdenotes extraction or emergence, much like s-, but with a key difference: iztypically implies that the landmark is a container, whereas ssuggest a surface. this distinction can be conceptualized as ideas coming off the top of one's head versus being deeply extracted from the mind (cf. @xcite . with the verb smisliti, thinking is solution-oriented, focusing on devising a concreate idea or plan. meanwhile, izmisliti implies the act of bringing an idea into existence, whether real or fictional. however, in both cases, the result of the process of thinking emerges from one's mind (cf. @xcite . however, the verb smisliti belongs to the semantic frame coming_up_with (8), which highlights the mental effort involved in generating a solution or plan, while izmisliti fits into the frame achieving_first (9), which highlights the creation of something novel or original, often with an element of innovation. ## conclusion in many less-and under-resourced languages, the challenges of developing complex lexical resources are all the greater as there is a lack of more fundamental linguistic resources (e.g., learners' monolingual dictionaries, monitor corpora or a thesaurus, to name a few), that will probably never be created. the verbion database aims to fill that void in croatian by merging several linguistic approaches in order to provide an all-encompassing description of most frequent verbs in croatian. apart from focusing on the presentation of their arguments structure, verbion also includes a semantic description of verbs classified into semantic classes. the analysis of verbs of thinking presented here proves that different lexical resources can be successfully merged with minimal adjustments. 170 sentences containing 8 verbs of thinking in croatian were annotated using 8 semantic frames from the original framenet data, and compared to their english translations to establish links with equivalent frame elements. in most examples, existing fes were the exact match to annotate croatian lexical units, or could have been well used to account for a very similar meaning. one new semantic frame needed to be defined, take_care_of, which did not exist in framenet to describe situations when an agent looks after someone, takes care of someone, or thinks of someone in the same context. in certain examples, a decision had to be made whether to go for a more granular or schematic description of the verb's sense, e.g. for the senses of opinion and judgement of the verb misliti 'think'. a finer semantic description will be kept in future croatian framenet, as opposed to verbion that does not exclusively rely on semantic frames for verb description. this analysis will serve as the model for developing benchmarks for the validation of automatic frame assignment, which is particularly important for languages like croatian, with rich morphology. scarce online resources, particularly semantically based lexical resources, present an obstacle in the development of llm-based applications for croatian and other less-resourced languages. the creation of verified and valid frame-based lexical resources will certainly improve the efficiency of the existing llms, and help in their applications.