TEMP: Temporal Frame

Deﬁnition: The assertion (s TEMP t) expresses that the situation s holds within the time interval t (or, if s is an event, that it occurs within t). If the ﬁrst argument is of sort o, then the second argument speciﬁes the time interval or moment when o exists. It should be emphasized that t may be disconnected.

There are three types of TEMP usage:

With a situation (the most often):

 John repaired the violin and sold it.

Here every situation is connected by TEMP relation with a node which represents the time when this situation occured. These temporal nodes can further be connected by various temporal relations. A shorthand annotation of the above example is this:

Here the meaning is the same as in the first network, but the time concepts are not explicitely created. Note: We'll use this shorthand method in our annotating since it's simpler.

With an object TEMP relation can connect the object to the time when this object existed (e.g., “Friday lesson” will look like (lesson TEMP Friday)).

With time concepts on both ends of the relation. In this case (t₁ TEMP t₂) means that the time interval t₁ lies somewhere within time interval t₂.