Abstract:
This paper discusses the benefits and limitations of drawing conceptual inferences based on entries in a rich verb lexicon, VerbNet. Automatic sense tagging and semantic role labeling can be used to match predicate arguments structures in a sentence with specific syntactic and semantic frames from the lexicon, allowing conceptual inferences to be drawn. However, as with any hand-crafted resource, the entries do not always contain the desired inferences. Links to an ontology are suggested as a means of broadening the range of possible inferences.