Text Meaning Representations

A TMR is a language-neutral description (an interlingua) of the meaning conveyed in a natural language text, and is derived by syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic analysis of the text. Because the TMR is intended to be language neutral, it is also deliberately syntax neutral, and avoids using terminology like clause, proposition, tense, etc., which are associated more closely with the syntactic structure of a particular language. In addition to providing information about the lexical-semantic dependencies in the text, the TMR represents stylistic factors, discourse relations, speaker attitudes, and other pragmatic factors present in the discourse structure. In doing so, the TMR captures not only the meaning of individual elements in the text, but also the relations between those elements, and captures both propositional and nonpropositional components of textual meaning.

The results of analysis of an input text are represented in a formal, frame-based language. The meanings of most open-class lexical units are represented by instantiating, combining and constraining concepts available in the ontology. However, the intent of a text cannot fully be captured by instantiating ontological concepts alone; information about pragmatic and discourse related phenomena must be represented, and relations between components of meaning must also be expressed. To facilitate this, the TMR language contains special notation for representing attitudes, relations, speech acts, time, quantities, rates, and sets.

   
Figure 2: Partial Text Meaning Representation of Example Sentence.

Figure 2 displays a portion of the TMR output for sentence 1:

1a. El grupo Roche, a través de su companía en Espana, adquirió Doctor Andreu, se informó hoy aquí.

1b. The Roche group, through its company in Spain, acquired Doctor Andrew, it was announced today.

The central concept for the ``acquire'' clause is ACQUIRE-129. This maps various concepts into the AGENT, THEME and INSTRUMENT slots. The significance of these mappings and how they were selected will be detailed below.