Adverbs, Surprisingly

Dmitry Nikolaev, Collin F. Baker, Miriam R. L. Petruck, Sebastian Padó

Published 2023-05-31Version 1

This paper begins with the premise that adverbs are neglected in computational linguistics. This view derives from two analyses: a literature review and a novel adverb dataset to probe a state-of-the-art language model, thereby uncovering systematic gaps in accounts for adverb meaning. We suggest that using Frame Semantics for characterizing word meaning, as in FrameNet, provides a promising approach to adverb analysis, given its ability to describe ambiguity, semantic roles, and null instantiation.