Et Tu Brutus?

Topic Maps and

Discourse Semantics
TM as a semantic technology
 Brutus killed Cesar with a dagger.

Clearly, although Cesar must have seen, when

entering the Senate in Rome on the Ides of March
in 44 BC that Brutus, aka Marcus Junius Brutus,
was cheesed off because he had chatted up
Porcia, Brutus’ wife, he did not expect that he
might be brutally murdered by Brutus with a
dagger. He had, therefore, not bought Band-Aid
at Forum Romanum, although the market was
open on that day, it being a weekday.
Modeling discourse: information about
• Some possible world or domain
• Some speaker’s or writer’s view of that world
• And the way this speaker or writer has chosen
to structure and convey this information on a
particular occasion.
 Discourse meaning
• Propositional meaning
• Grammatical meaning
• Modal meaning
• Textual meaning
 Discourse meaning
• Propositional meaning typically involves real world entities,
events and situations and should therefore, as default, be
encoded using topics and associations.
• Grammatical meaning typically represents properties of real
world entities, events and situations and should therefore, as
default, be encoded using internal occurrences.
• Modal meaning typically reflects the validity of statements on
the part of the speaker or writer and should therefore, as
default, be encoded using scope.
• Textual meaning is typically used to facilitate the elaboration,
enhancement or extension of information and should
therefore, as default, be encoded using reification.
 Propositional meaning I

Brutus killed Cesar mercilessly with a dagger in

the Senate on the Ides of March

kill(agent : brutus, goal : cesar, instrument :

dagger, manner : mercilessly, place : senate, time
: ides)
 Propositional meaning II

Brutus killed Cesar mercilessly with a dagger in the Senate

on the Ides of March

Brutus killed Cesar mercilessly with a dagger on the Ides of

March in the Senate

* Brutus killed Cesar in the Senate on the Ides of March

with a dagger mercilessly
 Propositional meaning III

a) kill(agent : brutus, goal : cesar) ~brutus-kill-cesar

#Brutus kill Cesar

b) proposition(nucleus : brutus-kill-cesar, manner : mercilessly,

instrument : dagger) ~brutus-kill-cesar-mercilessly-with-a-dagger
#Brutus kill Cesar mercilessly with a dagger

c) proposition(nucleus : brutus-kill-cesar-mercilessly-with-a-
dagger, time : ides, place: senate)
#Brutus kill Cesar mercilessly with a dagger on the Ides of March
in the Senate
 Grammatical meaning
kill(agent : brutus, goal : cesar, instrument : dagger
~instrument-dagger) ~brutus-kill-cesar-with-dagger

brutus-kill-cesar-with-dagger
tense: "past";
aspect: "imperfective".

instrument-dagger is a dagger
definiteness: "definite".

dagger.
 Modal meaning I
kill(agent : brutus, goal : cesar) ~brutus-kill-cesar
@probability
brutus-kill-cesar
tense: "past ".
#Brutus may have killed Cesar

kill(agent : brutus, goal : cesar) ~brutus-kill-cesar

@likelihood
brutus-kill-cesar
tense: "future".
#Brutus will probably kill Cesar
 Modal meaning II

No way, Brutus may have killed Cesar

 Textual meaning I

a) Brutus was cheesed off because Cesar had chatted up

Porcia.

b) Cesar expected an attack. Therefore, he had bought

Band-Aid.

c) Brutus killed Cesar. Then he fled Rome. It was one

mistake after another.
 Textual meaning II

Brutus was cheesed off because Cesar had chatted up

Porcia.

cheesed-off(subject : brutus, reason : cesar-chatting-

up-porcia)
 Textual meaning III

Cesar expected an attack. Therefore, he had bought

Band-Aid

reason-result(reason : cesar-expecting-attack, result :

cesar-buying-band-aid)
 Textual meaning IV
Brutus killed Cesar. Then he fled Rome. It was one
mistake after another.

time-sequence(before : brutus-killing-cesar, after :

brutus-fleeing-rome) ~brutus-killing-cesar-and-then-
fleeing-rome

evaluation(evaluated : brutus-killing-cesar-and-then-
fleeing-rome, evaluation : one-mistake-after-another)
 Other discourse phenomena
• Appositions and genitives (e.g. Cesar had
chatted up Porcia, Brutus’ wife)

• Cohesion (e.g. the fact that the Ides of March

in 44 BC, on that day and it refer to the same
thing and that Forum Romanum is also the
market)
 Reifying role playing topics

Cesar chatted up Porcia, Brutus’ wife

married(husband : brutus, wife : porcia ~wifeporcia)

chat-up(agent : cesar, goal : wifeporcia) ~cesar-

chatting-up-porcia
 Why encode discourse in TM?
• Discourse as topic maps (i.e. discourse is prior
to the topic map).

• Topic maps as discourse (topic map is prior to

discourse)