Building Frame Semantics Resources for Scandinavian and Baltic Languages

In English Annotated data with role-semantic information are becoming an ever more important resource for
many semantic systems. They form the core element to develop large coverage, high-performance,
and reusable semantic parsers, classifiers as well as applications that include lexicography, term and information
extraction, semantic processing of the web, text-to-scene conversion systems, etc.
Existing examples of role annotated corpora/resources include for English: FrameNet, PropBank, and
VerbNet, for German: Salsa, and for Spanish: Spanish FrameNet. However, the two main initiatives
outside English take FrameNet as a semantic pivot and attempt to derive or adapt frames to the target
language using manual work or semiautomatic systems.
As frequently observed, the itemization of frames and lexical units and their manual annotation in a
corpus is an expensive task that requires a relatively long-term and dedicated commitment. Such an
effort is currently beyond the reach of most research teams in the Nordic/Baltic area, which could impair
the quality, and possibly the existence, of future semantic applications in these languages. This
makes the construction of a role-semantic annotated corpus and the design of automatic or semiautomatic
transfer methods a challenge as well as an opportunity.
These proceedings contain the seven papers of the FRAME 2007 workshop, which was held on May
24, 2007 in Tartu, Estonia. They provide perspectives from various areas on current research in frame
semantics and we hope they will foster new ideas to start the construction of role-annotated corpora
in the Nordic/Baltic region and possibly share it across families of related languages.