Discovering frames in specialized domains

This paper proposes a method for discovering semantic frames (Fillmore, 1982, 1985; Fillmore et al., 2003) in specialized domains. It is assumed that frames are especially relevant for capturing the lexical structure in specialized domains and that they complement structures such as ontologies that appear better suited to represent specific relationships between entities. The method we devised is based on existing lexical entries recorded in a specialized database related to the field of the environment (erode, impact, melt, recycling, warming). The frames and the data encoded in FrameNet are used as a reference. Selected information was extracted automatically from the database on the environment (and, when possible, compared to FrameNet), and presented to a linguist who analyzed this information to discover potential frames. Several different frames were discovered with this method. About half of them correspond to frames already described in FrameNet; some new frames were also defined and part of these might be specific to the field of the environment.