Formal Representation of Temporal Expressions

11 pages•Published: March 18, 2019

Abstract

In this paper we address the semantics of temporal expressions in natural language (such as vchera,’yesterday’, shestnadcatogo maja, ’on the 16th of May’, tri dnja ’three days’) and the way they interact with some other manifestations of temporality (such as functioning of prepositions and aspectual verb forms). A formal and constituent description of heterogeneous temporal expressions is proposed. We consider the interval algebra presented by James Allen to be the right basis for such a description. The new formal system is compared with the known TimeML project. The latter has weak spots - the meaning of some temporal expressions simply can not be represented in terms of TimeML. We discuss such cases and show how to analyze them in our formal system.

Keyphrases: allen s interval algebra, interval temporal logic, natural language semantics, temporal expressions

In: Gerhard Wohlgenannt, Ruprecht von Waldenfels, Svetlana Toldova, Ekaterina Rakhilina, Denis Paperno, Olga Lyashevskaya, Natalia Loukachevitch, Sergei O. Kuznetsov, Olga Kultepina, Dmitry Ilvovsky, Boris Galitsky, Ekaterina Artemova and Elena Bolshakova (editors). Proceedings of Third Workshop "Computational linguistics and language science", vol 4, pages 84-94.

Links:	https://easychair.org/publications/paper/VVjp
	https://doi.org/10.29007/fdnj

BibTeX entry

@inproceedings{CLLS2018:Formal_Representation_Temporal_Expressions,
  author    = {Svetlana P. Timoshenko},
  title     = {Formal Representation of Temporal Expressions},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of Third Workshop "Computational linguistics and language science"},
  editor    = {Gerhard Wohlgenannt and Ruprecht von Waldenfels and Svetlana Toldova and Ekaterina Rakhilina and Denis Paperno and Olga Lyashevskaya and Natalia Loukachevitch and Sergei O. Kuznetsov and Olga Kultepina and Dmitry Ilvovsky and Boris Galitsky and Ekaterina Artemova and Elena Bolshakova},
  series    = {EPiC Series in Language and Linguistics},
  volume    = {4},
  publisher = {EasyChair},
  bibsource = {EasyChair, https://easychair.org},
  issn      = {2398-5283},
  url       = {/publications/paper/VVjp},
  doi       = {10.29007/fdnj},
  pages     = {84-94},
  year      = {2019}}

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