Compositional Syntactico-SemBanking for English as a Second or Foreign Language

Wenxi Li, Xihao Wang, Weiwei Sun


Abstract
Despite the widespread use of English as a Second or Foreign Language (ESFL), developing syntactico-semantic representations for it is limited — the irregularities in ESFL complicate systematic composition and subsequently the derivation of its semantics.This paper draws on constructivism and proposes a novel Synchronous Hyperedge Replacement Grammar (SHRG)-based constructivist approach to address the challenges. By using constructions as fundamental units, this approach not only accommodates both the idiosyncrasies and the compositional nature of ESFL, but also bridges the gap between literal cues and intended meaning.The feasibility of this constructivist approach is demonstrated using real ESFL data, resulting in a gold-standard, medium-sized syntactico-semantic bank that covers a wide range of ESFL phenomena.
Anthology ID:
2025.findings-acl.1252
Volume:
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2025
Month:
July
Year:
2025
Address:
Vienna, Austria
Editors:
Wanxiang Che, Joyce Nabende, Ekaterina Shutova, Mohammad Taher Pilehvar
Venue:
Findings
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
24395–24406
Language:
URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/display_plenaries/2025.findings-acl.1252/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Wenxi Li, Xihao Wang, and Weiwei Sun. 2025. Compositional Syntactico-SemBanking for English as a Second or Foreign Language. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2025, pages 24395–24406, Vienna, Austria. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Compositional Syntactico-SemBanking for English as a Second or Foreign Language (Li et al., Findings 2025)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/display_plenaries/2025.findings-acl.1252.pdf