Dynamic Argument Structure (2017)

Abstract: This paper presents a new classification of verbs of change and modification, proposing a dynamic interpretation of the lexical semantics of the predicate and its arguments. Adopting the model of dynamic event structure proposed in Pustejovsky (2013), and extending the model of dynamic selection outlined in Pustejovsky and Jezek (2011), we define a verb class in terms of its Dynamic Argument Structure (DAS), a representation which encodes how the participants involved in the change behave as the event unfolds. We address how the logical resources and results of change predicates are realized syntactically, if at all, as well as how the exploitation of the resource results in the initiation or termination of a new object, i.e. the result. We show how DAS can be associated with a dynamically encoded event structure representation, which measures the change making reference to a scalar component, modelled in terms of assignment and/or testing of values of attributes of participants.

## dynamic argument typing as clarified at the very beginning of this section, in this paper we enrich and refine the analysis of change events reviewed in section 1.2.1 above by focusing on the participants of the event. that is, we take into account the argument structure of the verbs in questions, and examine and encode how each participant changes while the event unfolds over time. particularly, we propose a new representational model for argument structure information encoded in verbs, called dynamic argument structure (das). the dynamic argument structure encodes how an argument to an event contributes to the change being expressed. das identifies the following properties for each argument to a predicate: the mode of change it undergoes; its semantic role; its semantic type; and whether it is syntactically realized. we will distinguish four primary modes of change that a participant may assume, each of which refers to the role played by that specific argument as the event unfolds. an argument undergoes modification (mod) if there is an identifiable attribute whose value is changed during the event. an argument undergoes initiation (init) if it is brought into existence as predicated by the verb, and undergoes termination (term) if the converse is true. an argument undergoes transfer (transfer) when it represents the transfer of information from a source through a medium (both these roles are defined below). in the representations that follow, we also consider the existence mode. this is not a mode of change: it is a mode that qualifies the resource that exists prior to and independently of the event, corresponding to the available material out of which an object is created (with creation predicates) or to the object which is terminated (with destruction predicates). notice that there exists an implication between the modes in (17), such that termination presupposes initiation, which presupposes modification which presupposes esistence. as regards typing, following @xcite and @xcite , we assume that the semantic type of an argu-ment is a value selected from an inventory of types in the language. in addition to the montague types, e and t, we use subtypes including complex types @xcite , that is, types which are composed of more than one type, such as the type associated with the word book, which include a physical and an informational component. for the present study, the relevant types are summarized in ( 18 we will also distinguish collections (groups) from individuals, and use entity for the most general type. concerning the notion of role, as in most theories where semantic roles are adopted, role assignments are usually unique for each argument to the verb. but as we demonstrate in the discussion below, when events are interpreted dynamically, labels to each argument will reflect the role it plays in that phase of the event, which may change as the event unfolds. we will draw on the following semantic roles for characterizing the behavior of arguments of creation and destruction predicates during an event. there is a clear relation between the roles, particularly between the resource and the result; we will illustrate in 1.3 how this is captured formally. in order to keep track of the change occurring in the participants throughout the process, we adopt and extend the notion of dynamic program variable, used in @xcite for motion predicates and in @xcite for general scalar predicates. a dynamic program variable is a variable that keeps track of the current state of what has been "acted on". it may designate either the values of the attribute of the resource being modified -with change of state verbs, or the intermediate stages of the "resultto-be" -with creation or destruction predicates. it is annotated vith a vector, x. for example, in the unfolding process of building a house, the dynamic program variable representing the intermediate stages of the "coming-into-existence house" is encoded as result. finally, the feature syn encodes the conditions under which an argument is expressed in the syntax. there are three possible values: expressed, covert, and optional. both covert and optional arguments are licensed by the predicate and present at the level of semantic representation, but while the former encode participants that can never be expressed, the latter encode participants that may be omitted under specific conditions. an example of covert argument is the dynamic program variable, which is present in the dynamic inspection of the event but not expressed syntactically. now let us consider how to encode these features of the arguments to a verb. for this purpose, we use a feature structure representation. the argument-based change profile das for a transitive verb, verb(x, y) is illustrated (20). we use the roles in (19) to label the variables, in order to have a better view of the dynamic behavior of the resource and the result through the change. the representation in (20) can be seen as a dynamic way to encode the arguments in the verb's lexical entry, which, as we have seen in (11), also includes es and qs as representational levels. with respect to the es, das represents an abstraction of the phases of the event as encoded through the arguments. the question then becomes how one integrates the argument-based change profiles into a dynamic event structure representation. we propose that annotating the arguments in the event structure with the modes of change introduced in das actually captures dynamics directly, and allows us to recover the dynamic aspects of the event from the annotation on the arguments to the verb. we introduce and discuss the proposed combined das and es annotation in the following section, where we apply it to the analysis of several subclasses of creation and destruction predicates. foot_2