Entity Namespace

Core Definition

Entity frames classify what something is — they provide the ontological category label for a concept. The primary semantic content is the entity type itself: the frame names a kind of thing, not an action, property, or relation. Entity frames are non-dynamic and non-predicating: they do not profile events, changes, or attribute assignments. The LUs in this namespace are overwhelmingly nouns (common nouns, nominal expressions) that denote classes of entities.

Formal template:

ENTITY(x) [± Type] [± Domain]

Key participants:

• Entity — the conceptual instance being categorized (the referent)
• Type — the ontological subcategory (often lexically encoded in the LU itself)

Entity frames serve primarily as referring expressions: their role is to pick out a kind of thing in the world, not to predicate something of it. This distinguishes them from Attribute frames (which say how something is) and Relational frames (which say how it is connected to something else).

Scope

Includes:

• People: médico (doctor), criança (child), atleta (athlete), migrante (migrant)
• Artifacts: carro (car), arma (weapon), recipiente (container), ferramenta (tool)
• Biological entities: animal (animal), planta (plant), patógeno (pathogen)
• Body parts: mão (hand), fígado (liver), tendão (tendon)
• Substances: medicamento (medication), substância_tóxica (toxin), alérgeno (allergen)
• Locations: cidade (city), floresta (forest), fronteira (border), via (road)
• Organizations / Institutions: empresa (company), exército (army), hospital (hospital)
• Texts / Documents: contrato (contract), gênero_textual (text genre), lei (law)
• Temporal units: semana (week), século (century), período (period)
• Abstract social entities: dinheiro (money), economia (economy), idioma (language)

Excludes — see other namespaces:

• Attribute assigned to an entity → Attribute (alto, temperatura elevada)
• Static connection between entities → Relational (João tem um carro, ser filho de)
• Event or process → Eventive / Causative / Inchoative / Action / Transition
• Discourse-level communicative function → Pragmatic

Critical boundary — entity vs. attribute: Many nouns can appear in both entity and attribute contexts depending on grammatical role:

• O médico chegou → Entity (noun picks out an individual by category)
• João é médico → Entity (nominal predication = category assignment, not property predication)
• João é alto → Attribute (adjective predicates a scalar property)

The test: if the LU is a noun whose primary function is to NAME a type of entity, it is Entity; if the LU predicates a property or assigns a value on a scale, it is Attribute.

Subtypes

By ontological dimension (three-way classification from the existing framework):

By ontological domain:

Diagnostic Tests

Test 1 — Nominal head

Is the primary LU a noun (or nominal expression) denoting a class of entities?

✓ médico, carro, floresta, lei, semana → nouns naming entity types → ENTITY
✗ alto, cansado, frequente → adjectives predicating properties → NOT ENTITY (Attribute)
✗ correr, quebrar, chegar → verbs profiling events → NOT ENTITY (Action/Causative/Transition)

Test 2 — Category label test

Does the LU answer O que é X? (What is X?) rather than Como é X? or O que X faz??

✓ O que é isso? — É um recipiente. → ENTITY
✗ Como é o João? — Ele é alto. → NOT ENTITY (Attribute)
✗ O que aconteceu? — Choveu. → NOT ENTITY (Eventive)

Test 3 — Non-eventive

Does the frame apply without profiling any event, change, or action?

✓ médico (in any sentence) — names a professional category regardless of verb → ENTITY
✓ O carro está estacionado — "carro" names the entity; the stative is separate → ENTITY
✗ A porta abriu — the frame is the state-change, not the entity category → NOT ENTITY (Inchoative)

Test 4 — Ontological dimensions

Can the entity be located on all three dimensions (Reality × Nature × Essence)?

✓ médico: Real / Artifactual (social role) / Concrete → ENTITY
✓ dinheiro: Real / Artifactual / Abstract → ENTITY
✓ dragão: Supernatural / Natural (in fiction) / Concrete → ENTITY
✗ alto: not an entity — it's a property → NOT ENTITY (Attribute)

Test 5 — Reference test

Does the LU serve primarily as a referring expression (picks out a class of things) rather than a predicating expression?

✓ Os animais precisam de água — "animais" refers to a biological class → ENTITY
✓ O médico chegou — "médico" picks out an individual by type → ENTITY
✗ O carro é vermelho — "vermelho" predicates a color → NOT ENTITY (Attribute)

Comparison with Adjacent Namespaces

vs. Attribute: Both are non-dynamic and apply to entities without profiling events. The distinction is grammatical and semantic: Entity frames name what the entity IS (nominal classification — É um médico, É um carro); Attribute frames say how the entity IS on some property scale (É alto, É vermelho). The LU type is the clearest signal: nouns → Entity; adjectives / scalar predicates → Attribute.

vs. Relational: Relational frames describe a connection between two entities (João tem um carro, Maria é filha de Pedro). Entity frames describe the category of one entity (carro, médico). Many entity subtypes co-evoke relational structure (Pessoas_por_vocação implies a social role relation), but the Entity frame is primary when the LU's core contribution is the category label, not the relation.

vs. Stative: The sharpest overlap. João é médico is simultaneously stative (a state holds) and Entity (nominal category assignment). Assign to Entity when the semantic head is the nominal category noun and the frame is defining a kind of entity. Assign to Stative when the proposition describes a property or condition holding over an entity (João está cansado, João é alto) without naming an entity type.

vs. Pragmatic: Entity frames name types of things, including communicative roles (Pessoa_do_discurso: speaker, hearer). These are classified as Entity because they name participant types even though those types are defined by discourse role. Pragmatic frames, by contrast, do not name entity types — they encode communicative acts and discourse functions.