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# Adposition and Case Supersenses v2.6: Guidelines for English

**Authors:** [Nathan Schneider](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/nathan-schneider/), [Jena D. Hwang](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/jena-d-hwang/), [Vivek Srikumar](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/vivek-srikumar/) et al. · **Year:** 2017 · **Venue:** arXiv preprint (guidelines, version 2.6 of the scheme, arXiv:1704.02134) **Link:** [arxiv.org/abs/1704.02134](https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.02134) · **Licence:** arXiv — non-exclusive licence to distribute — summary only

[**9** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W2810536597) openalex-snapshot · 2026-10-14[**19** citations in our library](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/cited-by/schneider-2017-adposition-case-supersenses-v2-6/) of the 140673 papers whose bibliographies we read[arXiv:1704.02134](https://openalex.org/S4306400194)[licence](http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/)

- [Publisher's page](https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.02134)
- [PDF](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1704.02134)
- [arXiv 1704.02134](https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.02134)
- [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2810536597)

**Authors (11)**

1. [Nathan Schneider](https://openalex.org/A5014008069) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2745-0533) · h 28 · 6580 citations · 159 works
2. [Jena D. Hwang](https://openalex.org/A5080544237) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3801-294X) · h 23 · 1967 citations · 93 works
3. [Vivek Srikumar](https://openalex.org/A5013135203) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0419-6568) · h 33 · 8170 citations · 196 works
4. [Archna Bhatia](https://openalex.org/A5113922728) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0593-8212) · h 12 · 869 citations · 52 works
5. [Na-Rae Han](https://openalex.org/A5025158167) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8771-0173) · h 11 · 681 citations · 37 works
6. [Tim O'Gorman](https://openalex.org/A5069010932) h 15 · 626 citations · 46 works
7. [Sarah R. Moeller](https://openalex.org/A5065106608) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3612-2811) · h 8 · 211 citations · 33 works
8. [Omri Abend](https://openalex.org/A5059068945) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4311-3876) · h 25 · 2084 citations · 134 works
9. [Adi Shalev](https://openalex.org/A5066554128) h 3 · 49 citations · 5 works
10. [Austin Blodgett](https://openalex.org/A5015640737) h 7 · 171 citations · 24 works
11. [Jakob Prange](https://openalex.org/A5022361649) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4640-5295) · h 6 · 137 citations · 34 works

Citations and author metrics from openalex-snapshot (2026-10-14); authors with the same name are not always told apart.

## What it is about

This is the annotation manual for SNACS, a scheme that labels English prepositions, case markers and possessives with "supersenses", a small set of semantic classes. The inventory has 52 labels in three branches: CIRCUMSTANCE (18 labels, for example LOCUS, SOURCE, GOAL, TEMPORAL), PARTICIPANT (15, for example AGENT, THEME, BENEFICIARY) and CONFIGURATION (19, for example POSSESSOR, WHOLE, QUANTITY). Each token gets a scene role and a function, which can differ when the choice of adposition invites a different construal. The scheme covers only relations with a figure–ground asymmetry, so coordination and information structure are out of scope. The labels are applied to the STREUSLE corpus, version 4.5, which follows guidelines 2.6. The manual gives definitions, test sentences and constraints on which label pairs are allowed, for example that some labels never serve as a role.

## Ideas

- I1. `prag/src/roles.rs`: add a SNACS-like table for the adpositions used in the school lessons (the `world/src/knowledge.rs` courses). Store each entry as a scene role and a function, as the manual does, and measure what share of PP tokens in the lessons get a label.
- I2. Turn the constraints of section 5 (for example, purely abstract labels and no temporal-locational construals) into rule checks on Mova's output. A labelled PP that breaks a constraint is flagged, which gives a deterministic negative control.
- I3. Use the manual's "NP is good/bad for V-ing" test as a rule for `for` with a PURPOSE reading, and check it on the lesson sentences where `for` is ambiguous.

## For Mova

The chapters are [22. Phrases: noun, adjective, adverb and prepositional phrases](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/22-phrases/) (prepositional phrases) and [10. Word classes](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/10-word-classes/) (adpositions and case). The code is `prag/src/roles.rs`, with the lesson data in `world/src/knowledge.rs`. The measures: label coverage on the lessons, the share of constraint violations, and an error table for the preposition `for`. The inventory is an idea to borrow for the role layer; its annotation process is not.

## Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [arXiv 1704.02134](https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.02134)

```
@misc{schneider2017adposition,
  title = {{Adposition and Case Supersenses v2.6: Guidelines for English}},
  author = {Schneider, Nathan and Hwang, Jena D. and Srikumar, Vivek and Bhatia, Archna and Han, Na-Rae and O'Gorman, Tim and Moeller, Sarah R. and Abend, Omri and Shalev, Adi and Blodgett, Austin and Prange, Jakob},
  year = {2017},
  eprint = {1704.02134},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.02134}
}
```

- [← previous SherLIiC: A Typed Event-Focused Lexical Inference Benchmark for Evaluating Natural Language Inference](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/schmitt-2019-sherliic-typed-event-focused-lexical/)
- [next → Comparing Rule-based and SMT-based Spelling Normalisation for English Historical Texts](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/schneider-2017-comparing-rule-based-smt-based/)
- [↑ back to English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/en/)

## References

30 references, 4 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

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3. Laura Banarescu, Claire Bonial, Shu Cai, Madalina Georgescu, Kira Griffitt, Ulf Hermjakob, Kevin Knight, Philipp Koehn, Martha Palmer, and Nathan Schneider. Abstract Meaning Representation (AMR) 1.2.2 Specification, September 2015. URL [https://github.com/amrisi/amr-guidelines/blob/c9b899b38f881143887d450be8a8482f810f4942/amr.md](https://github.com/amrisi/amr-guidelines/blob/c9b899b38f881143887d450be8a8482f810f4942/amr.md) . [↗](https://github.com/amrisi/amr-guidelines/blob/c9b899b38f881143887d450be8a8482f810f4942/amr.md)
4. Austin Blodgett and Nathan Schneider. Semantic supersenses for English possessives. In Nicoletta Calzolari, Khalid Choukri, Christopher Cieri, Thierry Declerck, Sara Goggi, Koiti Hasida, Hitoshi Isahara, Bente Maegaard, Joseph Mariani, Hélène Mazo, Asuncion Moreno, Jan Odijk, Stelios Piperidis, and Takenobu Tokunaga, editors, Proc. of LREC, pages 1529–1534, Miyazaki, Japan, May 2018. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Austin+Blodgett+and+Nathan+Schneider%2E+Semantic+supersenses+for+English+possessives%2E+In+Nicoletta+Calzolari%2C+Khalid+Choukri%2C+Christopher+Cieri%2C+Thierry+Declerck%2C+Sara+Goggi%2C+Koiti+Hasida%2C+Hitoshi+Isaha)
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