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# The Berkeley FrameNet Project

**Authors:** [Collin F. Baker](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/collin-f-baker/), Charles J. Fillmore, John B. Lowe · **Year:** 1998 · **Venue:** Proceedings of ACL-COLING 1998 (project description, ACL Anthology P98-1013) **Link:** [aclanthology.org/P98-1013](https://aclanthology.org/P98-1013/) · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC-SA 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/) — summary only

[**2624** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W2115792525) openalex · 2026-10-19[**1026** citations in our library](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/cited-by/lex-1998-baker-berkeley-framenet/) of the 140673 papers whose bibliographies we read[ACL-COLING 1998 (Montréal)](https://openalex.org/S4363608652)[licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/)

- [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.3115/980845.980860)
- [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/P98-1013.pdf)
- [DOI 10.3115/980845.980860](https://doi.org/10.3115/980845.980860)
- [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2115792525)

**Authors (3)**

1. [Collin F. Baker](https://openalex.org/A5002283728) [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/1749194) · h 23 · 5292 citations · 71 works
2. [Charles J. Fillmore](https://openalex.org/A5018141309) [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/2912454) · h 55 · 27135 citations · 125 works
3. [John B. Lowe](https://openalex.org/A5007778267) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7290-7256) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/1406118956) · h 9 · 3497 citations · 19 works

Citations and author metrics from openalex (2026-10-19); authors with the same name are not always told apart.

## What it is about

The paper describes the Berkeley FrameNet project, a corpus-based lexicon for English. Its goal is frame-semantic descriptions of several thousand English lexical items, backed by annotated corpus sentences. Each frame gives frame elements, the roles of an event, and each target word has a valence description that links its frame elements to grammatical functions and phrase types. The authors plan at least 5,000 lexical entries with a parallel annotated corpus, for use with WordNet and COMLEX. The project works in stages: a Vanguard prepares frame descriptions, annotators tag example sentences by hand, and a Rearguard writes the dictionary-style entries. The paper gives the workflow and the tools, and no accuracy figures.

## Ideas

- I1. `world/src/frames.rs`: map each English verb's arguments in EWT test to frame elements through the dependency labels (subject, object, oblique), and count how often the mapping is consistent with a frame's linking. Measure the match rate per frame on held-out sentences.
- I2. Pattern coverage for the school lessons: for each verb in the school silver corpus, choose example sentences that cover each argument pattern (the paper's annotated example set), and report the share of patterns covered per verb in `world` lessons.
- I3. Frame-element inventory: check the frame elements that `onto` (FrameNet 1.7) lists against the roles the `world` reader fills, and count the roles with no reader rule. The count is the measure, before any new rule is written.

## For Mova

The code is `world/src/frames.rs` and the FrameNet data in `onto`. The chapters are [28. Voice and the passive](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/28-voice-and-passive/) for the linking of arguments, and `21-clause-structure.md` for the argument slots. The paper is an early project description, and the FrameNet data it describes has its own licence, so use it for design ideas and tests, not as a source of build data. Measure first: the frame-linking match rate on held-out EWT sentences, two identical runs.

Topics: [Semantic role labeling](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/topics/semantic-role-labeling/)

## Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [DOI 10.3115/980845.980860](https://doi.org/10.3115/980845.980860)

```
@inproceedings{baker1998berkeley,
  title = {{The Berkeley FrameNet Project}},
  author = {Baker, Collin F. and Fillmore, Charles J. and Lowe, John B.},
  booktitle = {ACL-COLING 1998 (Montréal)},
  year = {1998},
  doi = {10.3115/980845.980860},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.3115/980845.980860}
}
```

- [← previous I don't believe in word senses](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/lex-1997-kilgarriff-word-senses/)
- [next → CatVar: A Database of Categorial Variations for English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/lex-2003-habash-catvar/)
- [↑ back to English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/en/)

## References

6 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

1. Charles J. Fillmore and B. T. S. Atkins. forthcoming. FrameNet and lexicographic relevance. In Proceedings of the First International Conference On Language Resources And Evaluation, Granada, Spain, P8-30 May 1998. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Charles+J%2E+Fillmore+and+B%2E+T%2E+S%2E+Atkins%2E+forthcoming%2E+FrameNet+and+lexicographic+relevance%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+First+International+Conference+On+Language+Resources+And+Evaluation%2C+Granada%2C+Spain%2C+P)
2. Susanne Gahl. forthcoming. Automatic extraction of subcorpora based on subcategorization frames from a part of speech tagged corpus. In Proceedings o/ the 1998 COLING-A CL conference. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Susanne+Gahl%2E+forthcoming%2E+Automatic+extraction+of+subcorpora+based+on+subcategorization+frames+from+a+part+of+speech+tagged+corpus%2E+In+Proceedings+o%2F+the+1998+COLING%2DA+CL+conference%2E)
3. Institut f'dr maschinelle Sprachverarbeitung IMS. 1997. IMS corpus toolbox web page at stuttgart, [http://www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de/~oli/CorpusToolbox/](http://www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de/~oli/CorpusToolbox/). [↗](http://www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de/~oli/CorpusToolbox/)
4. John B. Lowe, Collin F. Baker, and Charles J. Fillmore. 1997. A frame-semantic approach to semantic annotation. In Tagging Text with Lexical Semantics: Why, What, and How? Proceedings of the Workshop, pages 18-24. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=John+B%2E+Lowe%2C+Collin+F%2E+Baker%2C+and+Charles+J%2E+Fillmore%2E+1997%2E+A+frame%2Dsemantic+approach+to+semantic+annotation%2E+In+Tagging+Text+with+Lexical+Semantics%3A+Why%2C+What%2C+and+How%3F+Proceedings+of+the+Workshop%2C)
5. Special Interest Group on the Lexicon, Association for Computational Linguistics, April. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Special+Interest+Group+on+the+Lexicon%2C+Association+for+Computational+Linguistics%2C+April%2E)
6. Mitre. 1998. Alembic Workbench web page at Mitre corp. http: //www.mitre.org/resources/centers/advanced\_info/g04h/workbench.html. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Mitre%2E+1998%2E+Alembic+Workbench+web+page+at+Mitre+corp%2E+http%3A+%2F%2Fwww%2Emitre%2Eorg%2Fresources%2Fcenters%2Fadvanced%5C%5Finfo%2Fg04h%2Fworkbench%2Ehtml%2E)
