General Tagging Guidelines

• per person
  e.g. Irene or Irene Adler (tag both Irene and Adler as per)
• org organization
  e.g. Scotland Yard
• dat date and or time
  e.g. the 31st, 2 o'clock, 2pm, Aug 8.
  for 8 pm tag as number (for 8) and (post-meridian) for pm
• loc location
  e.g. Riding Thorpe Manor; Norfolk; Baker Street
• oth any other proper name
  e.g. Samsung Galaxy SII
• year year
  e.g. 1984

We sometimes create named entities in order to match across languages, although we do not expect to keep them in the wordnet.

These are tagged as notag in SemCor.

Suggesting changes to wordnet (tag with w)

• If it can be tagged with an existing synset (preferred)
  • write in the comments something like: This lemma is a synonym of 012345678-x
    e.g. for laidback_u, it is a synonym of "02408011-a: laid-back, mellow", so we add synonym of 02408011-a in the comment
• If you need to suggest a new synset (there is no appropriate concept in wordnet), then, in the comments, you need to:
  • Write This lemma is a hyponym/instance of 012345678-x
    python_s is a hyponym of "06898352-n programming language",
  • you may mention other relations:
    This lemma is an antonym of 012345678-x
    This lemma is related in some way to 012345678-x
    This lemma is in the domain of computing
  • You should also give a definition, and ideally an example:

    	      Lemma: arrow (Singapore English)
    	      This is a hypernym of 012345678-x
    	      Def:    "To assign a task to someone. Generally used only if the task is unpleasant or boring."
    	      Ex:     "They come and arrow me type their document"
    	    

    If you are not working in English, please give a definition in both English and the language you are working in.
• If this word comes up multiple times, you only need to give detailed comments in the first instance. After then, just say see earlier comments
• If the missing entry is a multi-word expression, then mark each word with w and put the suggestions for the synset in the first word. For example: you see that we have cut it rather fine.
  Tag cut, it and fine with w, and add information to cut:
  lemma: cut it fine, cut things fine; definition: "to allow very little time for something, ...
• If you are authorized to make changes to wordnet directly, see below

Tagging Metaphorical Uses

Tagging Foreign Words

Extending wordnet

Tagging Issues

• A word can be in two multi-word expressions:
  6740: I lived in that farm , where I had a room down below , and could get in and out every night , and no one the wiser
  tag as both get_in and get_out
• What are some more examples of bad lemmas?
  When the morphological analyzer has made an error:
  • well dressed man dressed not dress
  • Sherlock Holmes Sherlock_Holmes not sherlock_holmes
  In these cases, if you cand find an appropriate sense, put it in the tag box, don't chose a Meta tag.
• Common errors for English
  • adjective/past-participle: dressed dressed|dress
    In general prefer adjective, then verb
  • adjective/present-participle/noun: dressing dressing|dress|dressing
    In general prefer adjective, then verb, then noun
  • plural noun/noun/adjective: goods goods|good|good woods woods|wood
    In general prefer adjective, then noun (if both senses are appropriate): So, damp in damp weather is an adjective, even though a noun sense exists. But nouns can pre-modify adjectives: cotton in cotton shirtsis a noun.
    singular or plural normally has a meaning difference: pick the right meaning
  When there is a meaning difference, go with the closest meaning
• Common errors for Japanese/Chinese/Indonesian
  • There are a lot of tokenization errors
  • Sadly the wordnet often has bad entries
• When does the system miss an entry?
  • Differences in spelling/hyphenization; errors in tokenization and lemmatization
    night bird, nightbird, night-bird

Detailed Guidelines for English

These are based on the Guidelines for the Gloss Annotation Project and the Cheatsheet fof the Gloss Annotation Project, thanks to Christiane Fellbaum for sharing them.

How to determine part of speech for the word/collocation. This is not always as obvious as it seems! There are four particularly tricky cases. These are all tricky because the part of speech of a word is not always the same as the grammatical function that the word is performing in the sentence or phrase. For instance, nouns can function similarly to what are traditionally called adjectives, and verbs can take on the roles of nouns or adjectives.

Adjective vs. noun modifying a noun

• favorable conditions are forecast
• damp weather is behind us

• conditions unfavorable for flying

• entertainment value
• children's books
• cotton shirts

The general rule of thumb for deciding whether it is a noun or adjective is to check the sense list first for whether there is an adjective sense corresponding to the word, and, if not, then whether there's a corresponding noun sense. So, damp in damp weather is an adjective, even though a noun sense exists. And cotton in cotton shirts is a noun, which is modifying another noun. If there is no adjective sense in WordNet, then you should make sure that it is not truly an adjective that is missing from WordNet. A good clue that you have an adjective is if you try to modify it with very or rather and it sounds ok: very/rather favorable conditions (ok) vs. very/rather cotton shirts (not ok). Another good clue is if you can make a comparative or superlative form out of it (damper/dampest/more favorable/most favorable conditions are all adjectives, but cottoner/cottonest/more cotton/most cotton shirts are not). If either of these tests come up ok (that is, very/rather x sounds good or either x-er/x-est or more/most x sounds good), and there is no matching adjective sense, then you need to add a new sense to wordnet. Note that these tests are only valid if they come up ok. Then you know you have an adjective for sure. If the tests are not ok, then it may still be an adjective. This is because the tests only work for certain kinds of adjectives, but not all. If the tests are not ok (that is, none of very/rather x and x-er/x- est/more x/most x sound good), then check for a matching noun sense. If there is no matching noun sense, then do not assign any sense. (But see below first regarding present and past participles, since it might be a verb!). If a noun sense does exist, then the word can be considered a noun, and be tagged to the noun sense.The noun-sense rule applies only when the word is modifying a noun. If the word is being used predicatively (that is, after some form of the verb be, or where the verb could be replaced by a verb such as seem, look, appear, etc.) In the predicative case, there may be some confusion as to whether what follows the verb is an adjective or a noun. So, in

• the weather was damp

damp is an adjective here. Notice that you can replace was with seemed/looked/appeared and still get a grammatical sentence: the weather seemed/looked/appeared damp. But note the difference between the pairs:

• he was drunk [pos = adjective]
• he was really drunk [pos = adjective]

• he was a drunk [pos = noun]
• he was obviously a drunk [pos = noun]

In the second pair, drunk is clearly a noun, not an adjective. It is the complement of the verb be here. Two reliable ways to recognize a noun are if it is (or can be) preceded by a determiner (such as a or the) or adjective (he was a silly drunk). In summary: When you have the situation of modifier noun, the modifier will be an adjective when there is a corresponding adjective sense in WordNet for the meaning it is being used with OR there is no corresponding adjective sense, but any of the tests come up ok ( very/rather (sounds good when you preface it with very or rather) or –er/– est/more/most (x-er/x-est/more x/most x)) , in which case Sense not in WordNet should be assigned.

The modifier will be a noun when:

• There is no corresponding adjective, and the very/rather and –er/–est/more x/most x tests are not ok, and a corresponding noun sense exists

If it is neither an adjective nor a noun, it might be a verb (see below)

Adjective vs. present participle (-ing form) of verb

The -ing form of verbs can function as adjectives. For instance,

• you are frightening me [pos = verb]
• that is a frightening prospect [pos = adjective (modifier)]
• that prospect is frightening to me [pos = adjective (modifier)]
• that prospect is frightening me [pos = verb]

• we are working hard today [pos = verb]
• the car is in good working order [pos = adjective/(modifier)]

How to tell? The easy case is when the word is modifying a noun. In general, these are adjectives if there is a corresponding adjective sense in WordNet. Such adjective senses exist for frightening and working . However, this is not the case for clicking and playing, so that in the following sentences,

• the door opened with a clicking sound
• the baseball player’s playing record was impeccable

the appropriate verb senses of click and play would be selected instead. (This is because these are verbs playing the part of adjectives, but are not adjectives in themselves.) When the word appears predicatively (after some form of the verb be), the rule can't always be applied since it might be impossible to tell whether it is being used as a verb or an adjective.

• That dress is striking on you [adjective]
• The workers are striking for better working conditions [verb]
• The women are striking [ambiguous]

Without more information, you cannot know whether the third sentence means that the women are picketing, or whether they are beautiful. For ambiguous cases like this, if the context does not make it clear chose which you think is most appropriate and add a comment saying that it is hard to tell.

Adjective vs. past participle (usually -en form) of verb

Past tense participles can also function as adjectives. The past tense participle is the form of the verb that appears with the past tense auxiliary have. It usually, though not always, ends in -en or -ed: written, destroyed, and spun are past participles of write, destroy and spin, respectively. The rule of thumb will be similar to the present participle cases. Where the word modifies a noun, check first for a corresponding adjective sense. If no adjective sense exists, then assign the verb sense (if there is one that matches the meaning as used in the sentence).

• that wasn’t the intended result [adjective]
• make out an itemized list [verb functioning as modifier]

Again, the hard cases occur when the word appears predicatively (ie., after some form of the verb "to be", or where the preceding verb can be replaced by a verb such as seem/look/appear, etc.).

• The sentence was written down for clarity. [verb]
• The sentence was written as opposed to spoken. [adjective]
• The sentence was written [ambiguous]

In the first sentence, written is a verb. A good test of this is to put the auxiliary verb in the progressive – The sentence WAS BEING written down for clarity. That makes it clear it is an act or action that occurred. The second sentence cannot be phrased that way and still have the same sense: The sentence was being written as opposed to spoken.In the third sentence, it is not clear whether "written" refers to an act of writing, or the attribute or quality of being written. For ambiguous cases like this, do not assign a sense, and the lexicographers will make the determination.

Noun vs. present participle (-ing form) of verb

To complicate things further, the present participle of verbs can function as a noun. Often, the distinction is easy to make, if it appears where a noun is called for grammatically, and there is a corresponding noun sense in WordNet.

• he made a killing in the stock market [noun]
• the discordant ringing of nonmusical metallic objects [noun]

If no noun sense exists, then assign the verb sense, if one exists, as for

• The merry frolicking of the lark [verb functioning as noun]

However, if the word is being used as a verb, then a noun sense should never be assigned! This is easy if there is no noun sense, as for frolicking

• the lark is given to frolicking merrily [verb]

• make a sound like a car engine that is firing too soon [verb]

You can test this out, too. A verb can never be modified by a or the or a possessive pronoun such as my/your/our, etc. Try it with the 2 sentences above--it hurts! But, again, there will be cases where this determination will be impossible to make

• She dislikes writing thank-you letters [verb]
• She had no knowledge of the writing of the letter [noun]
• She had been talking about writing [ambiguous]

It is not clear whether writing in the 3rd sentence refers to the act of writing something (eg, a letter), or whether writing is the object itself (ie, her writing, or an author's writing, marks on a piece of paper, etc.) For ambiguous cases like this, assign a sense and comment on the difficulty.

Adjective+hyphen+inflected noun long-legged, brown-eyed

Tag the first word as JJ, surface form includes the hyphen, lemma does not: long-, JJ long; brown-, JJ brown.

Tag the second word as NN, surface form includes the ed, lemma does not: legged, NN leg; eyed, NN eye. If the compound is in wordnet, make a multi-word compund and use it (e.g long-legged is 02385851-a).

In any case, make two concepts for the original words, tagged as 'x' for the multiword and tagged for each word otherwise.

Similarly for well-written (Adv, verb) and odd-sounding: split, lemma does not include hyphen.

Irregular Comparatives/Superlatives

Using Wordnet Relations to determine sense (or senses)

In WordNet, senses are in part defined by their relations to other senses. For this reason, the WordNet relations can be very useful in narrowing down which of the senses applies to a particular occurrence of the form. The relations for any word or collocation can be viewed through the WordNet browser. From the WordNet entry of the word you are tagging, clicking on one of the sense buttons will display the full entry: you may want to middle click to open in a new tab.

The main relations that are of help are Hypernyms, Derivationally related forms, and Domain. Not all relations will appear for all words and all parts of speech for a word.

Hypernym (ISA relation)

The immediate hypernym is the most relevant one here. It is the first indented relation just below the definition (preceded by an arrow =>). The hypernym relation will tell you what kind of thing (object or action) the word refers to. The higher up you go in the hypernym relations, the more general the senses get (and so often less informative). There is a new indentation for each level up you go. For instance, two senses of the noun center that are rather close are

• A: center, centre, middle, heart, eye -- (an area that is approximately central within some larger region; "it is in the center of town"; "they ran forward into the heart of the struggle"; "they were in the eye of the storm")
• B: center, centre, midpoint -- (a point equidistant from the ends of a line or the extremities of a figure)

Domain

Is this term restricted to one topic or area or field or context?

Where they exist, the domain relations can be quite helpful in narrowing senses down. A word’s domain will tell you whether it is restricted to some field or area such as Law or Art. Take the noun work. It has 7 senses, and if you look at its domains, you can see that one of its senses is restricted to the domain of physics, having to do with the transfer of energy.

References

• Bond, Francis, Luís Morgado da Costa, and Tuấn Anh Lê (2015) IMI — A Multilingual Semantic Annotation Environment. In Proceedings of ACL-IJCNLP 2015 System Demonstrations, Beijing. pp 7–12
• Christine Fellbaum, editor. 1998. WordNet: An Electronic Lexical Database. MIT Press.
• Shari Landes, Claudia Leacock, and Christiane Fellbaum. 1998. Building semantic concordances. In Fellbaum (1998), chapter 8, pages 199–216.
• H. Langone and B. R. Haskell and G. A. Miller 2004 Annotating WordNet. In Proceedings of the Workshop Frontiers in Corpus Annotation at HLT-NAACL 2004.
• Shan Wang and Francis Bond (2014) Building The Sense-Tagged Multilingual Parallel Corpus In 9th Edition of the Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC 2014), Reykjavik.

Thanks to Christiane Fellbaum for sharing some documentation from the wordnet gloss tagging project. Source for the tagger is available here.