Here are two lists that might help you whether or not to verbalize

• Common cases when to verbalize
• Common cases when not to verbalize

We map many nouns to their verbal forms:

Example:  The boy's destruction of the room.
     (d / destroy-01
           :ARG0 (b / boy)
           :ARG1 (r / room))

Example:  I met his math teacher.
     (m / meet-02
           :ARG0 (i / i)
           :ARG1 (p / person
                 :ARG0-of (t / teach-01
                       :ARG1 (m2 / mathematics)
                       :ARG2 (h / he))))

But we don't map all nouns that have a related verb sense:

Example:  California governor Jerry Brown
     (p / person :wiki "Jerry_Brown"
           :name (n / name :op1 "Jerry" :op2 "Brown")
           :ARG0-of (h / have-org-role-91
                 :ARG1 (s / state :wiki "California"
                       :name (n2 / name :op1 "California"))
                 :ARG2 (g / governor)))

A governor is not just a person who governs. It's a specific rank. Governors govern, but not all who govern are governors, including presidents, mayors, and other members of the executive branch.
Similarly: chairman, contractor, correspondent, director, editor, president, treasurer

We also don't verbalize adjectives such as white to whiten, because whiten means to make white rather than to be white. Something can be white without ever having been whitened: it might have been white from the beginning of its existence. For the same reasons, we don't map from familiar to familiarize.
Similarly: deaf, deep, glad, hard, legal, liquid, modern, popular, ripe, sad, simple, soft, stable, wide

close this window