A corpus driven approach applying the "frame semantic" method for modeling functional status terminology.

In an effort to unearth semantic models that could prove fruitful to functional-status terminology development we applied the "frame semantic" method, derived from the linguistic theory of thematic roles currently exemplified in the Berkeley "FrameNet" Project. Full descriptive sentences with functional-status conceptual meaning were derived from structured content within a corpus of questionnaire assessment instruments commonly used in clinical practice for functional-status assessment. Syntactic components in those sentences were delineated through manual annotation and mark-up. The annotated syntactic constituents were tagged as frame elements according to their semantic role within the context of the derived functional-status expression. Through this process generalizable "semantic frames" were elaborated with recurring "frame elements". The "frame semantic" method as an approach to rendering semantic models for functional-status terminology development and its use as a basis for machine recognition of functional status data in clinical narratives are discussed.