Extending VerbNet with Novel Verb Classes

Lexical classifications have proved useful in supporting various natural language processing (NLP) tasks. The largest verb classification for English is Levin’s (1993) work which defined groupings of verbs based on syntactic properties. VerbNet (Kipper et al., 2000; Kipper-Schuler, 2005) – the largest computational verb lexicon currently available for English – provides detailed syntactic-semantic descriptions of Levin classes. While the classes included are extensive enough for some NLP use, they are not comprehensive. Korhonen and Briscoe (2004) have proposed a significant extension of Levin’s classification which incorporates 57 novel classes for verbs not covered (comprehensively) by Levin. This paper describes the integration of these classes into VerbNet. The result is the most extensive Levin-style classification for English verbs which can be highly useful for practical applications.