LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 11 : 5 May 2011
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.

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Semantic Representation of Causality

Sobha Lalitha Devi and Menaka S

Abstract

This is an attempt to study the semantic relation of Causality or Cause-Effect, how it is marked in Tamil, how the causal markers in Tamil manifest in texts, their syntactic and semantic properties and how this information can be represented so as to handle causal information and reasoning.

Keywords: causality; Tami; semantic relation; cause-effect.

I. INTRODUCTION

Causality or Cause-Effect relation is a complex semantic relation. It refers to the relation between two events. If an event E2 is caused by another event E1, then a causative relation exists between event E1 and event E2. E1 is the cause of E2 and E2 is the consequence of E1.

I bought a new pen because I lost the old one. - (1)

Here the event E1 is \I lost the old one. and the event E2 is \I bought a new pen.. The causality marker \because. connects the two events E1 and E2, thus establishing a Cause-Effect relationship between the two events.

I bought a new pen after I lost the old one. - (2)

In example (2), the events remain the same. But the marker \after. simply specifies a temporal relationship between the two events. Here, there is no Cause-Effect relation. Also, it may be noted that the relationship is asymmetric, i.e, E1 causes E2 does not imply E2 causes E1.

An attempt has been made to study this Cause-Effect relation in Tamil and the various markers which serve to express this semantic relation. The Attribute Value Matrix (henceforth AVM) representations for some of the markers have been drawn for some examples of expressions of cause. This has given an insight into the causal markers in Tamil.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Sobha Lalitha Devi
AU-KBC Research Centre
MIT Campus of Anna University
Chennai
Tamilnadu, India
sobha@au-kbc.org

Menaka S
AU-KBC Research Centre
MIT Campus of Anna University
Chennai
Tamilnadu, India
menakas@au-kbc.org
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