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Quantity

The UMR Guidelines list :quant among attributes in Part 3-3. as it is followed by a single value, not by a child node representing a concept. This single value is

  • typically a number, but there are also other options as
  • a pre-defined identifier (I suppose they refer to concepts like "more-than", "most", "between", "as-many-as", but also "all", "many", "several" or "a-few" – which looks like a concept at first sight, as it is in brackets and has its variable, typically followed by op1 with a number or other numerical value) or
  • ??? a string in quotation marks - not found in the English data)

In more detail, they discuss quantitative concepts in Part 3-2-2-5.

However, :quant is used as a relation, as discussed below

For quantification, the following relations and attributes are available:

  • :quant (role) ... as a basic keyword,
  • :ord (role) ... for ordinals, with obligatory o/ordinal-entity as its daughter complemented with the :value relation.

These non-participant roles are supplemented by the following sub-roles:

  • :unit... both for standardized, well-established units dollars, weeks) and for ad-hoc mensural constructions (cups),
  • :value... for numerical expressions incl. ordinals; further, for percentages, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and urls.

Further, two sub-roles are available:

  • :range ... to specify a time period,
  • :scale... for special cases like (Richter scale, Decibel scale).

:quant (relation)

The most basic keyword for quantification is :quant. The guidelines sometimes call it a “relation”, which would mean that it should be understood as an edge going to a child concept node, and sometimes an “attribute”, which means that there is an atomic value but no child node (see also terminology). Based on the examples, :quant can be both. In the typical situation, it is an attribute with a numeric value. But when it is used to annotate approximate cardinalities (more than, most), it will look as a relation whose child node is the approximative concept.

The :quant attribute is used for both exact and approximate cardinalities of sets of countable objects (three.quant houses, more than.quant three.op1 houses) as well as for the number of "units" of non-countable substances (three.quant cups.unit of milk),

For exact quantities, the value is expressed in digits even if the surface expression was verbose. The guidelines do not specify how it is normalized; I suppose that in languages where decimal comma is used in the text, it will be normalized to decimal point in UMR.

tři domy “three houses”
(d/ dům
    :quant 3)

Quantified nominals vs. quantities in predication

In the simplest case, quantity is an attribute of an entity concept. The concept node should thus be aligned to both the numeral and the noun.

Snědla tři knedlíky. “She ate three dumplings.”
(s / sníst-001
    :ARG0 (p / person
        :ref-person 3rd
        :ref-number singular)
    :ARG1 (k / knedlík
        :quant 3
        :ref-number plural))

Sedm dětí snědlo 45 knedlíků. “Seven children ate 45 dumplings.”
(s / sníst-001
    :ARG0 (d / dítě
        :quant 7
        :ref-number plural)
    :ARG1 (k / knedlík
        :quant 45
        :ref-number plural))

In predication we use the abstract roleset (reification) have-quant-91. The :ARG1 role is the counted entity, :ARG2 is the quantity, numerical or not. They do not say it explicitly but “numerical” could mean that we actually do not create a concept node for the quantity and :ARG2 will be turned from a relation to an attribute.

Těch knedlíků bylo pět. “The dumplings were five (there were five dumplings).”
(h / have-quant-91
    :ARG1 (k / knedlík
        :ref-number plural)
    :ARG2 5)

Problem: :quant vs. have-quant-91:
Where we should use the :quant attribute (not relation, see below!!) and where the have-quant-91 predicate?
Possible solution: Reserve have-quant-91 only for explicitly expressed comparisons and superlatives (or for cases annotated as comparison in PDT).

Feedback from Julia: I use these in the same way you mentioned above. For sentences like there are 10 more blue blocks than red blocks, I would use have-quant-91 as the top node of the graph and treat it as an event, with :aspect/:modstr/:temporal dependency.

Fractions

In some cases, non-integer quantities work the same way as integer quantities:

Snědla tři a půl knedlíku. “She ate three and a half dumplings.”
(s / sníst-001
    :ARG0 (p / person
        :ref-person 3rd
        :ref-number singular)
    :ARG1 (k / knedlík
        :quant 3.5
        :ref-number plural))

Snědla polovinu knedlíku. “She ate half a dumpling.”
(s / sníst-001
    :ARG0 (p / person
        :ref-person 3rd
        :ref-number singular)
    :ARG1 (k / knedlík
        :quant 0.5
        :ref-number plural))

However, the situation is different if the fraction relates to some larger set, as in Snědla polovinu (všech) knedlíků “She ate half of (all) the dumplings.”

DZ: I haven't seen a solution in the guidelines nor in the UMR 1.0 data. Supposedly the relation :part (:part-of, have-part-91) and the abstract concept percentage-entity could be used.

Snědla polovinu knedlíků. “She ate half of the dumplings.”
(s / sníst-001
    :ARG0 (p / person
        :ref-person 3rd
        :ref-number singular)
    :ARG1 (k / knedlík
        :ref-number plural
        :part (p2 / percentage-entity
            :value 50)))

Hlasovalo pro ně 20,5 procenta z celkového počtu 457319 voličů. “20.5 percent of the total number of 457,319 voters voted for them.”
(h / hlasovat-003
    :ARG0 (p / person
        :ARG0-of (v / volit-001
            :aspect habitual)
        :quant 457319
        :ref-number plural
        :part (p2 / percentage-entity
            :value 20.5))
    :ARG1 (p3 / person
        :ref-person 3rd
        :ref-number plural))

Approximate quantities

The UMR Guidelines give an English example for more than 3, see (1f) below. The UMR list of abstract concepts offers more-than as a cross-lingual abstract concept which should be used in such examples (instead of native concepts in other languages). Further, example (1f) in the guidelines shows an :op1 attribute of more-than, which gives the numeric value to compare with.

(1f) more than three houses
(h / house
	:quant (m / more-than
        :op1 3))

více než tři domy “more than three houses”
(d / dům
    :quant (m / more-than
        :op1 3))

However, the superlative-like construction nejvíce hlasů “most votes” will be annotated as an elliptical construction (= nejvíce hlasů ze všech odevzdaných hlasů) using the have-quant-91abstract predicate, as described in the following section.

Having this in mind, comparison-like constructions as více něž 3 domy could be alternatively interpreted as elliptical, too (meaning více domů než 3 (domy) ). Then, their annotation would be parallel to the one offered for superlative-like constructions. While this possibility is not mentioned in the Guidelines, it is described in the AMR Guidelines, see below.

As it is not clear enough where to simply use the :quant relation/attribute and where to use the have-quant-91 predicate, the suggestion is to reserve have-quant-91 only for explicitly expressed comparisons and superlatives (or for cases annotated as comparison in PDT).

Comparisons and superlatives relating to amounts of things (have-quant-91)

As the UMR Guidelines do not discuss comparative-like and superlative-like constructions, we have to consult the AMR Guidelines.

For comparison-like quantities, the AMR Guidelines suggest to use have-quant-91 with the following roleset:

have-quant-91
ARG1: entity (thing being quantified)
ARG2: quantity (numerical or quantifier: many, much)
ARG3: degree mention (more, less, equal, too)
ARG4: compared-to
ARG5: superlative: reference to superset
ARG6: consequence, result

And exemplified this:

  • [en] He sold as many cars as his competitor. (= He sold cars the quantity of which.ARG1 is equal.ARG3 comparing to those cars.ARG4 which were sold by his competitor.)
He sold as many cars as his competitor.
(s / sell-01
      :ARG0 (h/ he)
      :ARG1 (c/ car
            :ARG1-of (h2/ have-quant-91
                  :ARG3 (e2/ equal)
                  :ARG4 (c3/ car
                        :ARG1-of (s2/ sell-01
                              :ARG0 (p/ person
                                    :ARG0-of (c2/ compete-02
                                          :ARG1 h)))))))
  • [en] He sold the most cars of his competitors. (= He sold cars the quantity of which.ARG1 has degree most.ARG3, which is superlative with respect to those cars.ARG5 (=reference to the superset) which were sold by his competitor.)
He sold the most cars of his competitors.
(s / sell-01
      :ARG0 (h/ he)
      :ARG1 (c/ car
            :ARG1-of (h2/ have-quant-91
                  :ARG3 (m/ most)
                  :ARG5 (c3/ car
                        :ARG1-of (s2/ sell-01
                              :ARG0 (p/ person
                                    :ARG0-of (c2/ compete-02
                                          :ARG1 h)))))))
  • [en] I had scarcely enough drinking water to last a week.
(h / have-03
      :ARG0 (i/ i)
      :ARG1 (w/ water
            :purpose (d2/ drink-01
                  :ARG0 i)
            :ARG1-of (h3/ have-quant-91
                  :ARG3 (e/ enough
                        :mod (s/ scarce))
                  :ARG6 (l/ last-03
                        :ARG1 w
                        :ARG2 (t/ temporal-quantity :quant 1
                              :unit (w2/ week))
                        :ARG3 i))))

Comparison of quality

For comparisons and superlatives of quality, the have-degree-91 abstract predicate is used (in a parallel way as have-quant-91 for comparison of qualities of things), see Degree.

:units

Units (both standardized and informal) are presented as a relation whose child node is the unit concept. The relation goes from the concept counted (it is a sibling of :quant).

tři hrnky mléka “three cups of milk”
(m/ mléko
    :quant 3
    :unit (h/ hrnek))

:value

A value of the :value attribute is typically a numerical number.

Thus attribute is also used also for annotating ordinal numbers (with obligatory abstract concept ordinal-entity).

The second training was cancelled yesterday.
(c/ cancel-01
	:ARG1 (t/ train-01
		:ord (o/ ordinal-entity
			:value 2)
		:aspect Process)
	:temporal (y/ yesterday)
	:aspect Performance
	:modstr FullAff)

However, the same keyword :value is used as a relation for annotating percentages, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and urls.

Percentage should use the abstract concept percentage-entity with the numeric attribute :value (example (1c) in the guidelines. The guidelines do not show its usage in a sentence though. I assume that it could be used as a child node of the :quant relation.

30 percent
(p/ percentage-entity
	:value 30)

20,5 procenta voličů “20.5 percent of voters”
(v/ volič
    :quant (p/ percentage-entity
        :value 20.5))

Urls

http://umr-tool.cs.brandeis.edu/display_post
(u/ url-entity
	:value "http://umr-tool.cs.brandeis.edu/display_post")

:ord (role)

... for ordinals, with obligatory o/ordinal-entity as its daughter complemented with the :value relation,

:range

... to specify a time period,

:scale

... for special cases like (Richter scale, Decibel scale).

Questions

How to annotate indefinite quantity?

[la] paululum commoratus 'having waited for a while'
(c/commoror
    :ARG0 (p/person
            ...)
    :duration (t/temporal-quantity
                :quant? (p2/paululum)))

Quantity types

The UMR lists provide also a set of pre-defined quantities (as abstract concepts) covering mainly physical quantities (fyzikální veličiny) like speed, volume, distance, temperature, acidity, etc., but also, e.g., monetary values. These quantities share

  • the :quant role (relation/attribute) for the amount and
  • :unit role (relation/attribute), represented as siblings in UMR graphs. In special cases,
  • :scale is used instead :unit (for acidity-quantity and seismic-quantity), or as its alternative (temperature-quantity with :unit for degree and :scale for celsius, kelvin, or farenheit).

AMR guidelines mention Quantity types in Sect. Quantities:

Quantity types include: monetary-quantity, distance-quantity, area-quantity, volume-quantity, temporal-quantity, frequency-quantity, speed-quantity, acceleration-quantity, mass-quantity, force-quantity, pressure-quantity, energy-quantity, power-quantity, voltage-quantity (zap!), charge-quantity, potential-quantity, resistance-quantity, inductance-quantity, magnetic-field-quantity, magnetic-flux-quantity, radiation-quantity, concentration-quantity, temperature-quantity, score-quantity, fuel-consumption-quantity, seismic-quantity, some of them are exemplified there. However, no exhaustive list and full descriptions/definitions are provided.