Banking Meaning Representations from Treebanks

Abstract

This paper describes a method to convert existing treebanks with syntactic information into banks of meaning representations. The central component is a system of evaluation for a small formal language with respect to an information state. Inputs to the evaluation system are formal language expressions obtained from the conversion of parsed representations conforming to (Penn Treebank Project) guidelines. Outputs from the evaluation system are Davidsonian (higher-order) predicate logic meaning representations. Having a system of evaluation as the basis for generating meaning representations makes possible accepting input with minimal conversion from existing treebanks and from the tools used to construct treebanks. Results of having built corresponding banks of meaning representations from available treebanks are discussed.