Annotation of C hinese Light Verb Constructions within UMR (2025)

Abstract: This paper discusses the challenges of annotating predicate-argument structures in Chinese light verb constructions (LVCs) within the Uniform Meaning Representation (UMR) framework, a cross-linguistic extension of Abstract Meaning Representation (AMR). A central challenge lies in reliably identifying LVCs in Chinese and determining their appropriate representation in UMR. We analyze the linguistic properties of Chinese LVCs, outline annotation difficulties for these structures and related constructions, and illustrate these issues through concrete examples. Our analysis focuses specifically on LVC.full types, where the light verb serves solely to convey morphological features and aspectual information. We exclude LVC.cause types, in which the light verb introduces an additional argument (e.g., a causal agent or source) to the event or state denoted by the nominal predicate. To address the practical challenge of semantic role assignment in Chinese LVCs, we propose a dual-path annotation approach: due to the compositional nature of these constructions, we recommend independently annotating the argument structure of the nominal predicate while systematically encoding the grammatical attributes and relations introduced by the light verb.

## introduction the presentation of light verb constructions (lvcs) continues to be a focal issue in both traditional linguistics and computational linguistics, garnering substantial attention over the years @xcite @xcite @xcite . lvcs are widely acknowledged as a universal linguistic phenomenon, composed of a verb-often referred to as "light"-paired with a single or compound predicative noun in its direct object position. the light verb makes only a minimal semantic contribution to the construction; instead, it primarily carries essential morphosyntactic properties such as person, number, tense, mood, and aspect @xcite . light verbs often exhibit unique and sometimes unpredictable behaviors across languages. chinese light verbs, in particular, with their syntactic and semantic flexibility, combined with a distinctive distribution that sets them apart from regular verbs-which typically exhibit higher semantic content and more specific argument requirements-pose challenges for their identification and representation within various meaning representation frameworks. @xcite @xcite @xcite . uniform meaning representation (umr), a recent graph-based framework designed to capture meaning across entire documents, provides promising opportunities for annotating lvcs, including those in chinese, where compounding is a common word formation process @xcite . rooted in abstract meaning representation (amr), the fundamental components of a umr graph are concepts and relations. at the sentence level, concepts typically map to words within a sentence, while at the document level, relations depict the semantic connections between these words @xcite . at sentence level, umr is flexible in allowing the use of both generic semantic roles, such as agent, theme, and patient, as well as predicate-specific roles, a practice widely adopted in the proposition bank approach to semantic role labeling @xcite . predicatespecific roles are defined in the propbank framesets, which provide entries for each predicate in a language @xcite . each predicate sense is assigned a unique set of core roles, labeled with numerical ids prefixed by "arg." for instance, the chinese verb 认 可 [renke, "accept"] has a first semantic frame, "认可-01," which defines the following roles: arg0-agent: the entity described arg1-tar: the entity arg0 accepts/ratifies the chinese verb 认可 [renke, "accept"] serves as an example where its defined roles can be applied to annotate occurrences of 认可 [renke, "accept"], even in contexts where some of its arguments are not explicitly stated. the lvc 获得 认 可 [huode-renke, "get-accept"] in (1) can be annotated in umr as follows: such light verbs have received less scholarly attention as they mostly function as regular verbs and require clear linguistic features for accurate identification. although comparative studies have examined lvcs in english and chinese and explored variations across major chinese-speaking regions, such as hong kong, taiwan, and beijing @xcite @xcite @xcite , research has primarily concentrated on specific verb groups, notably "do" (做 [zuo], 干 [gan], 搞 [gao]) and "give" (加 以 [jiayi], 予 以 [yuyi]). therefore, further investigation into other less commonly studied lvc types is needed to enrich both linguistic analysis and computational modeling. the absence of clear morphological distinctions between certain chinese nouns and their verbal counterparts, along with the intricate modifiers and argument structures of nominal complements, makes annotating chinese lvcs particularly challenging @xcite . these complexities highlight the need to strike a balance that ensures consistency across different types of chinese lvcs-a task that is both essential and demanding. we adopt broad criteria for lvc annotation from the parseme guidelines, a european project aimed at processing multiword expressions, including lvcs @xcite . @xcite applied these guidelines to the automatic tagging of chinese light verbs and introduced valuable adaptations. nevertheless, their research mainly focuses on tagging a restricted set of light verbs in the corpus and lacks detailed representations of lvcs within specific linguistic contexts. the rest of the paper is structured as follows. section 2 examines linguistics properties of chinese lvcs within the umr framework. section 3 introduces refined criteria for systematically identifying these constructions. section 4 highlights the distinctions between chinese lvcs and causative constructions. finally, section 5 concludes the paper by summarizing the key findings and suggesting directions for future research. these contributions aim to improve umr annotation practices and deepen the understanding of chinese lvcs in semantic representation frameworks. ## linguistic properties of lvcs in this section, we set aside highly grammaticalized light verbs, such as the "do" and "give" groups, to focus on syntactic and semantic structure of vague cut cases of lvcs in chinese and examine their diverse patterns. ## broad criteria for determining lvcs building on the tests developed by parseme, the umr annotation guidelines for lvcs in chinese introduce four specific tests to determine whether a verb with a predicative noun as complement qualifies as an lvc. ## causative constructions certain verb constructions in chinese resemble lvcs in form or function, particularly those expressing causative relations, but they do not fully satisfy the core definitional criteria of lvcs. while not the primary focus of this study, these constructions merit careful consideration, as their syntactic and semantic characteristics can easily be mistaken for genuine lvcs. in certain complex transitive verb constructions that can be interpreted as externally caused events, the process of causativization consistently appears to be feasible. @xcite , for instance, highlights verbs such as 弄醒 [nongxing, "wake"), 弄哭 [nongku, "make cry"], 搞 丢 [gaodiu, "lose"], and 搞 坏 [gaohuai, "destroy"), all of which demonstrate this pattern. similarly, @xcite investigates verbs containing the root 加 [jia, "add"], including 加宽 [jiakuan, "widen"], 加高 [jiagao, "heighten"], and 加强 [jiaqiang, "to strengthen"], observing that the 加 [jia, "add"] facilitates the formation of transitive counterparts of change-of-state verbs derived from open-scale adjectives that denote incremental increases. causative constructions inherently involve distinct semantic roles for both the causing event and the resultant state @xcite . therefore, the constituent verbs in such constructions function as independent predicates, each maintaining its own argument structure. this property distinguishes causative verb compounds clearly from true lvcs, even if one verb appears semantically "lighter" than the other. specifically, the so-called "light" verb in causative compounds still contributes a distinct argument structure, disqualifying it from classification as a genuine light verb. for example, in (16), the verb compound 打 破 [dapo, "break"] encodes two separate events: an action event 打 [da, "beat"] and a resultant state 破 [po, "break"]. thus, 打 [da, "beat"] denotes a causing action, and 破 [po, "break"] expresses the resulting event. this forms a compositional resultative construction rather than an lvc. from a semantic perspective, metaphorization involves extending a verb's literal, physical meaning into a more abstract domain. in chinese, certain verbs display such metaphorization, making their identification and annotation more challenging. the same verb compound 打破 [dapo, "break"] can function in both a literal sense, as seen in ( 16 ), and a metaphorical sense in (17), where 打 破 [dapo, "break"] is best interpreted as expressing the disruption or alteration of an abstract state. in umr annotation, the first frame of 打破 [dapo, "break"] treats the bird sound (arg0) as the agent and the stillness (arg1) as the theme. ## conclusion in this paper, we have explored the challenges inherent in annotating chinese light verb constructions within the uniform meaning representation framework. through an analysis of their structural and semantic characteristics, we illustrated how the syntactic flexibility of chinese light verbs complicates accurate annotation. we addressed key issues such as identifying lvcs, annotating argument structures, and distinguishing these constructions from similar forms. our findings reinforce prior research @xcite , confirming that chinese light verbs primarily fulfill grammatical roles rather than contributing substantive semantic meaning. nevertheless, their distinctive syntactic versatility calls for refined annotation guidelines to mitigate potential misclassifications. to address this, we proposed a dual-path annotation method, separately encoding the argument structure of nominal predicates and the grammatical properties of light verbs. this methodology sets the stage for future studies to investigate the intricate syntactic, semantic, and contextual dimensions of lvcs. ultimately, our work aims to enhance both linguistic research and computational modeling of chinese and other languages exhibiting similar complexities.