Chapter 16 Purpose Verbs

Work on ontologies and lexical semantics has long been aware of different subsumption relations among concepts that are lexically encoded as nouns (Gangemi et al. 2001, 2002; Guarino and Welty 2001). An important distinction is that between TYPES and ROLES (Guarino and Welty 2002; Pustejovsky 1995). For example, poodle and Welsh corgi are TYPES of dog, while pet, hunting dog, guard dog, and working dog are ROLES associated with dogs. This distinction has important consequences for the structure of an ontology, its potential for reasoning, and its usefulness in AI and NLP applications. The Generative Lexicon observes the difference between types and roles, labeling the latter Functional Types. Functional Types have a telic role associated with them (perhaps companionship for pet) and an intentionality that is introduced by an Agent. While this distinction among entities, lexicalized as nouns, is fairly established, little work has been done on events, lexicalized as verbs. The Generative Lexicon distinguishes Functional Events, which are characterized by a telic and/or an agentive role in the qualia structure of their arguments. We examine the distinction between the two different event types from the perspective of WordNet, where verbs like run and speak are distinguished from verbs like exercise and greet. We argue for a classification into “manner” and “purpose” verbs; purpose verbs overlap only partially with the Functional Events of the Generative Lexicon. Section 16.2 discussed the polysemy of the manner relation as it is coded in WordNet (Miller 1995; Fellbaum 1998). In Sect. 16.3, we argue that manner is far