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My most heartfelt thanks to ACL for this tremendous honor. I’m completely thrilled. I cannot tell you how surprised I was when I got Iryna’s email. It is amazing that my first ACL conference since 2019 in Florence includes this award. What a wonderful way to be back with all of my friends and family here at ACL. I’m going to tell you about my big fat 50-year journey. What have I been doing for the last 50 years? Well, finding meaning, quite literally in words. Or in other words, exploring how computational lexical semantics can support natural language understanding. This is going to be quick. Hold onto your hats, here we go. 

Semantic role labeling (SRL) resources, such as Proposition Bank (PropBank), provide useful input to downstream applications. In this paper we present some challenges and insights we learned while expanding the previously developed Russian PropBank. This new effort involved annotation and adjudication of all predicates within a subset of the prior work in order to provide a test corpus for future applications. We discuss a number of new issues that arose while developing our PropBank for Russian as well as our solutions. Framing issues include: distinguishing between morphological processes that warrant new frames, differentiating between modal verbs and predicate verbs, and maintaining accurate representations of a given language’s semantics. Annotation issues include disagreements derived from variability in Universal Dependency parses and semantic ambiguity within the text. Finally, we demonstrate how Russian sentence structures reveal inherent limitations to PropBank’s ability to capture semantic data. These discussions should prove useful to anyone developing a PropBank or similar SRL resources for a new language. 

This paper introduces GLAMR, an Abstract Meaning Representation (AMR) interpretation of Generative Lexicon (GL) semantic components. It includes a structured subeventual interpretation of linguistic predicates, and encoding of the opposition structure of property changes of event arguments. Both of these features are recently encoded in VerbNet (VN), and form the scaffolding for the semantic form associated with VN frame files. We develop a new syntax, concepts, and roles for subevent structure based on VN for connecting subevents to atomic predicates. Our proposed extension is compatible with current AMR specification. We also present an approach to automatically augment AMR graphs by inserting subevent structure of the predicates and identifying the subevent arguments from the semantic roles. A pilot annotation of GLAMR graphs of 65 documents (486 sentences), based on procedural texts as a source, is presented as a public dataset. The annotation includes subevents, argument property change, and document-level anaphoric links. Finally, we provide baseline models for converting text to GLAMR and vice versa, along with the application of GLAMR for generating enriched paraphrases with details on subevent transformation and arguments that are not present in the surface form of the texts. 

One of the areas where Large Language Models (LLMs) show promise is for automated qualitative coding, typically framed as a text classification task in natural language processing (NLP). Their demonstrated ability to leverage in-context learning to operate well even in data-scarce settings poses the question of whether collecting and annotating large-scale data for training qualitative coding models is still beneficial. In this paper, we empirically investigate the performance of LLMs designed for use in prompting-based in-context learning settings, and draw a comparison to models that have been trained using the traditional pretraining--finetuning paradigm with task-specific annotated data, specifically for tasks involving qualitative coding of classroom dialog. Compared to other domains where NLP studies are typically situated, classroom dialog is much more natural and therefore messier. Moreover, tasks in this domain are nuanced and theoretically grounded and require a deep understanding of the conversational context. We provide a comprehensive evaluation across five datasets, including tasks such as talkmove prediction and collaborative problem solving skill identification. Our findings show that task-specific finetuning strongly outperforms in-context learning, showing the continuing need for high-quality annotated training datasets. 

This paper reports the first release of the UMR (Uniform Meaning Representation) data set. UMR is a graph-based meaning representation formalism consisting of a sentence-level graph and a document-level graph. The sentence-level graph represents predicate-argument structures, named entities, word senses, aspectuality of events, as well as person and number information for entities. The document-level graph represents coreferential, temporal, and modal relations that go beyond sentence boundaries. UMR is designed to capture the commonalities and variations across languages and this is done through the use of a common set of abstract concepts, relations, and attributes as well as concrete concepts derived from words from invidual languages. This UMR release includes annotations for six languages (Arapaho, Chinese, English, Kukama, Navajo, Sanapana) that vary greatly in terms of their linguistic properties and resource availability. We also describe on-going efforts to enlarge this data set and extend it to other genres and modalities. We also briefly describe the available infrastructure (UMR annotation guidelines and tools) that others can use to create similar data sets. 

This paper reports the first release of the UMR (Uniform Meaning Representation) data set. UMR is a graph-based meaning representation formalism consisting of a sentence-level graph and a document-level graph. The sentence-level graph represents predicate-argument structures, named entities, word senses, aspectuality of events, as well as person and number information for entities. The document-level graph represents coreferential, temporal, and modal relations that go beyond sentence boundaries. UMR is designed to capture the commonalities and variations across languages and this is done through the use of a common set of abstract concepts, relations, and attributes as well as concrete concepts derived from words from invidual languages. This UMR release includes annotations for six languages (Arapaho, Chinese, English, Kukama, Navajo, Sanapana) that vary greatly in terms of their linguistic properties and resource availability. We also describe on-going efforts to enlarge this data set and extend it to other genres and modalities. We also briefly describe the available infrastructure (UMR annotation guidelines and tools) that others can use to create similar data sets. 

UMR-Writer is a web-based tool for annotating semantic graphs with the Uniform Meaning Representation (UMR) scheme. UMR is a graph-based semantic representation that can be applied cross-linguistically for deep semantic analysis of texts. In this work, we implemented a new keyboard interface in UMR-Writer 2.0, which is a powerful addition to the original mouse interface, supporting faster annotation for more experienced annotators. The new interface also addresses issues with the original mouse interface. Additionally, we demonstrate an efficient workflow for annotation project management in UMR-Writer 2.0, which has been applied to many projects. 

The Institute for Student‐AI Teaming (iSAT) addresses the foundational question:how to promote deep conceptual learning via rich socio‐collaborative learning experiences for all students?—a question that is ripe for AI‐based facilitation and has the potential to transform classrooms. We advance research in speech, computer vision, human‐agent teaming, computer‐supported collaborative learning, expansive co‐design, and the science of broadening participation to design and study next generation AI technologies (called AI Partners) embedded in student collaborative learning teams in coordination with teachers. Our institute ascribes to theoretical perspectives that aim to create a normative environment of widespread engagement through responsible design of technology, curriculum, and pedagogy in partnership with K–12 educators, racially diverse students, parents, and other community members.