Hindi PropBank Annotation Guidelines December ... - Verbs Index

The Arg1 label typically appears with the ‘affected’ entity of verbs that are transitive or
ditransitive. But it also appears with some intransitive verbs. Among the intransitive
verbs, there is a special class of intransitives called the unaccusative verbs. These
have a syntactic subject that does not have any agent-like properties (contrast it with
the case of an intransitive verb like nAca ‘dance', which needs an agentive subject).
Verbs such as Kula ‘open’ in (22) below do not require an agentive subject and hence
the syntactic (non-agentive) subject xarvAzA 'door' gets the PB label Arg1. The Arg1
label here is thus assigned to the ‘theme’ argument, typically defined as the entity that
is at rest or undergoing motion or change of state.
(22) [ ARG1 xarvAzA] KulA
door open-Pst
'The door opened.'
Similarly, in the following sentence, we have the verb jala ‘to burn’, which is
unaccusative, the syntactic subject CAwroM ke hAWa 'students' hands' is the affected
entity by the event of the verb and hence, it gets the PB label Arg1.
(23) [ ARG1 CAwroM ke hAWa] jala gaye
students of hands burn LV.Pst
‘The students' hands got burnt.’
Arg1 is also found with verbs like ho ‘be/become’ where the subject is a “theme”
argument with some attribute. The verb ho is also described as a linking verb (Kachru,
2006), which establishes a relationship between the subject (the theme argument) and
a complement. The complement could be an attribute like acCA ’good’ or a location
Gara meM ‘at home’ or an identity, e.g. `doctor’. In the following example, the subject
rAma gets the PB label Arg1:
(24) a. [ ARG1 rAma] [acCA] hE
Ram good be.Pres
‘Ram is good.’
b. [ ARG1 saDaka] [cODI] huI
road wide become-Pst
‘(The) road became wide.’
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