Predicatethecat

Predicatethecat is an open-source project and dataset designed to study predicate-argument structure in natural language processing. The project provides annotated resources and a lightweight toolkit to identify verbs (predicates) and their associated arguments (such as subject and object) across several languages, using a consistent framework for semantic role labeling. The name blends linguistic terminology with a playful branding to support education and research outreach.

Origins and scope: launched in 2019 through a collaboration of linguists, computer scientists, and educators. The project is hosted on a public repository with a permissive license and encourages community involvement. Core components include the CatPred dataset, annotation guidelines, a reference parser, and evaluation scripts. Data are formatted in a standard CoNLL-like convention and include metadata on language, domain, and annotation confidence. Tools support both manual annotation and semi-automatic labeling with semantic role labeling models.

Usage and impact:Predicatethecat resources are used in university courses and NLP research to illustrate predicate-argument structure, train and evaluate SRL systems, and compare model performance. The project maintains discussion forums and publishes periodic updates to accommodate new languages and domains. Limitations include coverage bias toward high-resource languages and the subjective nature of some annotations. Access is free for research and education, and contributions from the community are encouraged. For example, in the sentence The cat chased the mouse, the predicate is chased, with The cat as the agent (A0) and the mouse as the patient (A1).