MIKROKOSMOS

Glossary

Accompanier: an entity which joins the agent in the event, but is not the initiator of the event.
Addition: a domain relation in which one (or more) of the conjuncts are set apart from others, sometimes for rhetorical purposes.
Adversative: a domain relation which connects conjuncts whose differences are stressed in the utterance.
After: a temporal relation where one event happens after another in time.
Agent: the entity that causes or is responsible for an action. (the subject in a transitive sentence is often, but not always, the agent)
Alternation: a category of domain relations that are used in situations of choice, parallel to the logical connector "or.".
Aspect: that dimension of an action which is concerned with phase (begin, continue, end), iteration (single, multiple), and duration (momentary, prolonged).
At: a temporal relation where two events happen at the same time (the events can be either momentary or prolonged).
Attitude: how belief and feeling are reflected in a text.
Attribute: a quality or property.
Beneficiary: the entity that benefits from an action.
Case Role: an argument or typical role that a predicate can take, such as agent, patient, etc.; it appears as a property of an event in a TMR.
Causal: a category of domain relations indicating dependence among events, states, and objects.
Circumstantial Role: a role which relates events to more circumstantial pieces of information that describe them, such as location, time, etc. It appears as a property of an event in the TMR.
Clause: a unit of grammatical organisation smaller than the sentence, but larger than a word or phrase. [typical example would be sentences that are used in a subordinate clause, hence they are not a full sentence which can stay on its own, e.g., I believe (John is a smart-alek) (*clause*).]
Color: the use of terms that connote popular, obscene, or otherwise nonstandard speaker, dialect being the most significant case; a stylistic feature.
Comparison: a domain relation in which entity A is compared to entity B and the speaker believes that A and B are in some sense similar.
Concessive: a domain relation in which event or state A occurs despite the usual preconditions (i.e. event or state B) not being satisfied. Often introduced in English by "(even) though."
Concept: the mental representation of a process or object. Every entry in the ontology is a concept.
Condition: a domain relation in which event or state A is a necessary condition for event or state B (i.e. A is an event or a state which has not actually happened and is required for B to come about).
Conjunction: a category of domain relations among adjacent elements that are components of a larger textual element.
Contrast: a domain relation which connects conjuncts whose difference is stressed.
Coreference: The property of referring to the same entity. Two linguistic units which refer to the same entity (either linguistic or extra-linguistic) are said to be coreferential.
Cotheme: an entity whose state is described in relation to another.
Degree: a measurement of intensity;the extent to which something occurs or is done.
Deontic: a type of attitude. The scale of the deontic attitude goes from "The speaker believes that the possessor of the attitude must not X" (value 0) to "The speaker believes that the possessor of the attitude must X" (value 1.0).
Destination: an endpoint for actions & processes involving change of location, transfer.
Directness: a stylistic feature opposed to indirectness, directness describes the actual use of an utterance without evasiveness or use of euphemisms, e.g., a "direct question" as opposed to an "indirect question."
Domain Relation: a logical relation between events, objects, states, and/or text elements.
Duration: referring to verbal aspect, that dimension which considers the action in its length and development.
During: a temporal relation in which one event takes place after the beginning and before the end of another event.
Enablement: a domain relation where event A gives a possible cause for Event B. A doesn't necessarily cause B, but creates a situation where B may occur (e.g. removes the obstacles that were preventing B from occurring).
Enumeration: a conjunction domain relation in which all of the conjuncts have equal status.
Epistemic: a type of attitude. The scale of the epistemic attitude goes from "The speaker does not believe that X" (value 0) through "The speaker believes that possibly X" to "The speaker believes that X" (value 1.0).
Evaluative: a type of attitude. Evaluative attitudes are held toward events, things, properties and relations among them. One can also evaluate another attitude. Evaluation goes from "The worst for the speaker" (value 0) to "The best for the speaker" (value 1.0).
Event: a happening. An action or a process.
Exclusive-or: a domain relation used in situations of choice, where only one of the elements joined by "or" can apply.
Expectative: a type of attitude. The scale of the expectative attitude goes from "The possessor of the attitude does not expect that X" (value 0) through "The possessor of the attitude somewhat expects that X" to "The possessor of the attitude expects that X" (value 1.0).
Experiencer: the entity that undergoes psychological experience (perception, cognition); (e.g., passive role in involuntary perceptual event).
Filler: a form which can be used in a given place, e.g., a slot, in a structure.
Focus: that part of a sentence which is the center of a speaker's communicative interest, also known as a rheme.
Force: a stylistic feature describing intensity of expression.
Formality: part of a system which opposes formality to informality (intimacy, familiarity), referring to the level of language appropriate to formal social situations; a stylistic feature.
Gloss: to paraphrase or otherwise describe a word or words with another word or phrase. Usually, glosses are more detailed than the original.
Head: the central element of a phrase which governs the other parts of the phrase or sentence.
Hypernym: the class of which a concept is a member. AKA "superordinate." ["Fruit" is the hyperonym of "apple."]
Hyponym: a member of a class. ["Apple" is an hyponym of "fruit."] This relationship is known as ISA.
Inclusive-or: a domain relation that occurs when any of the elements joined by "or" can apply.
Instantiate: the process of taking a concept from an ontology and producing a representation of a particular example of that concept.
Instrument: an object used to implement an act.
Interlingua: an artificial language which is used in machine translation to represent the meaning of a text in a (natural) language- independent way.
Iteration: the dimension of verbal aspect which expresses that an action is a repeated or habitual one.
Lexicon: a machine-usable dictionary which contains entries for senses of words in a particular language. Every entry includes syntactic, semantic, and other information; the words of a language.
Location: the place where an event takes place or where an object exists.
Manner: the style in which something is done.
Means: the method or way in which something is accomplished.
Microtheory: a localized theory covering a relatively small aspect of one or many linguistic phenomena.
Object: a physical or abstract thing, in contrast to an event.
Ontology: a model of the world; an ontology defines the ways in which concepts are related, their relative significance, and their dependencies. The most significant relationship between concepts in the ontology is that of "hyponym/hypernymy" which determines if a concept belongs to the class defined by another concept.
Particular: a domain relation which relates two elements, one of which is a special case of the other.
Path: a slot which represents the route along which an entity (i.e., a theme) travels.
Phase: one of the types of aspectual determination of a predicate; the phase of a predicate determines if the event or state is beginning, ending, or continuing.
Polarity: the positive/negative contrast found in a language.
Politeness: a stylistic feature reflecting the level of courtesy extended by the speaker to the hearer/reader.
Potential: a type of attitude. The scale of the potential attitude goes from "X is not possible" (value 0) through "X is possible" (value 1.0).
Predicate: related to the two-part analysis of a sentence, in which the predicate refers to all parts of the sentence which are not the subject.
Predicate-Argument: the arguments of a predicate are those roles which are ancillary to it in a sentence.
Process: an action connected with the continuation, development and change of life or matter.
Property: an quality or feature of an entity. In the sentence "The house is green" the house has the property of being green.
Purpose: a goal; also a type of domain relation where Event A is a purpose for event or state B if A describes a goal which an intelligent agent tries to achieve by performing B.
Quantifier Relation: a relation expressed by a quantifier, identifying a contrast in quantity or quality.
Reason: a type of causal domain relation. The relation between an event or state, and a deliberate intentional action by an agent. Often (but not always) lexically realized in English through "because," "since" or "for the reason that."
Representative: a domain relation which relates two elements, one of which is an example of the other.
Respect: a stylistic feature denoting the fact that the speaker is not assuming familiarity or intimacy with the hearer.
Result: a type of domain relation where event A necessarily causes event B to happen.
Saliency: a type of attitude. The value of saliency varies with the importance that the user attaches to a text component. High saliency is attached to entities or properties that the speaker wants to be stressed.
Scope: the elements to which an operator applies.
Semantics: the study of language meaning.
Set: an unordered group of entities.
Simplicity: an aspect of style; the property of being easy to understand, clear and straightforward.
Slot: a field or argument of a head, which can contain data. Slots on concepts are relations (between the head and the data that fills the slot) or attributes of the head.
Source: conceptual places where various types of movement and transfer start (used for direction in verbs of motion).
Speech Act: a communicative activity, defined with reference to what is said by the speaker, the intentions of the speaker while speaking, and the effects achieved on the listener.
Style: the relationship between the semantic content of a linguistic expression and its actualization, commonly known respectively as content and form. The choices made by the speaker among the various paraphrases expressing a given content determine its form. The distinction deals particularly with the level of formality but involves also directness, simplicity, etc.
Stylistic Factor: any one of the aspects of style, such as formality, politeness, etc.
Syntax: study of the rules which govern the way words are combined to form sentences in a language.
Temporal Relation: relationships between two events or states involve necessarily a determination of whether the two happened at the same time or one happened before the other; these are temporal relations, and are broken into three categories: at, after, during.
Textual Relation: a relation between textual elements reflecting the organization of a document, as well as its discourse structure.
Theme: the entity whose state or location is being described, or whose state is affected by an action (direct object of an action; subject in an intransitive sentence).
Time: the general concept or relation of continuous or successive existence, capable of division into measurable portions, and comprising the past, present, and future. Time can be measured relatively (by stating that an event occurs before, after or at the same time as another event) or absolutely (by specifying a point in a system of reckoning or measuring duration).
TMR: Text Meaning Representation. The representation of the meaning and communicational effect of a text in a formal specification language used as an interlingua.
Value: the data that a slot contains. More specifically, the filler of the "filler" facet, as opposed to "default" or "semantic constraints" facet.
Volitive: a type of attitude. The scale of the volitive attitude goes from "The possessor of the attitude does not desire that X" (value 0) through "The speaker is not sure whether the possessor of the attitude desires that X" to "The possessor of the attitude desires that X" (value 1.0).
Volitive: a type of causal domain relation. The relation between a deliberate, intentional action of an intelligent agent and its consequence.