1. JavaNLP time annotations
SUTime
JavaNLP time annotations

2. What does SUTime do? Similar to GUTime
Recognizes time expressions using patterns
Deterministic, based on regular expression patterns
Greedy (picks longest sequence of tokens that may represent a time expression)
Normalizes time expressions
Annotations follow TimeML TIMEX3 standard
XSD:
Extensions for time expressions that are not supported by TIMEX3 standard
Resolves relative times with respect to reference date

3. SUTime Time Representation
Main Temporal types
Time – A instance in time ( ), can be partially specified (Friday), with limited granularity
Duration - A length of time (3 days)
Range – Time interval with start and end points
Set – A set of temporals
Periodic sets: Every Friday

4. SUTime Representation
Standard date and times (in years, months, days, day of week, hours, minutes, seconds, milliseconds)
Common times: Seasons (e.g. winter), Time of day (e.g. morning), Weekend
Partial Times (June => XXXX-06)
Relative Time (last week)
Duration
Exact durations (specified in milliseconds or in fields)
Inexact durations (a few years => PXY)
Duration ranges (2 to 3 months => P2M/P3M)

5. SUTime Limitations Holidays are not supported
Support for ranges is poor
from 3 to 4 p.m is identified as 15:57:00
12-13 March 2011 (12-13 is ignored)
Resolving relative expressions with respect to the given reference date can be problematic
Handling of ambiguous phrases is poor
Some common words (e.g. spring/fall) are always identified as a temporal expression
Patterns are language (English) specific …

6. SUTime Usage TimeAnnotator Pipeline
TimeAnnotator timeAnnotator = new TimeAnnotator(“sutime”, properties);
Properties:
Specifies SUTime options (prefixed by “sutime.”)
Pipeline
TimeAnnotator should come after the tokenizer, sentence splitter, and pos tagger
Optional (also before): NER or NumberAnnotator/QuantifiableEntityNormalizingAnnota tor

7. SUTime Options Property Description sutime. markTimeRanges
Whether time ranges should be marked (e.g. if markTimeRanges is true, July to August => range). Default = false.
includeNested
Whether nested time expressions should be included (e.g. if markTimeRanges is true, July to August => range, if includeNested is true, both July and August will also be marked as time expressions). Default = false.
teRelHeurLevel
Heuristics for determining how to resolve relative time
NONE = no heuristics (default)
(refdate = , Friday => )
BASIC = basic heuristics taking into account past tense
(refdate = , It happened Friday => )
MORE = more heuristics with since/until
includeRange
Whether range attributes should be included in the TIMEX3 XML output. Default = false.

8. SUTime input annotations
DocDateAnnotation (String)
If present, then the string is interpreted as a date/time and used as the reference document date with respect to which other temporal expressions are resolved
SentencesAnnotation (List<CoreMap>)
If present, time expressions will be extracted from each sentence and each sentence will be annotated individually.
TokensAnnotations (List<CoreLabel>)
Required either at the entire annotation level or per sentence level.

9. SUTime output annotations
Timex.Annotations (List<CoreMap>)
List of time expressions (each a CoreMap)
On the entire annotation and also for each sentence
Time annotations (for each time expression/CoreMap)
Annotation
Description
Timex.Annotation
Timex object with TIMEX3 XML attributes. Use for exporting TIMEX3 information.
TimeExpression.Annotation
TimeExpression object. Use getTemporal() to get internal temporal representation.
TimeExpression.ChildrenAnnotation
(List<CoreMap>)
List of chunks forming this time expression (inner chunks can be tokens, nested time expressions, numeric expressions, etc)

10. SUTime output annotations
Standard annotations (for each time expression)
Annotation
Description
TextAnnotation (String)
Text of this time expression.
TokensAnnotation (List<CoreLabel>)
Tokens that make up this time expression.
CharacterOffsetBeginAnnotation
(Integer)
The index of the first character of this time expression.
CharacterOffsetEndAnnotation
The index of the first character after this time expression.
TokenBeginAnnotation (Integer)
The index of the first token of this time expression.
TokenEndAnnotation (Integer)
The index of the first token after this time expression.
Note: Indices are 0-based, and always relative to the original annotation.
Begin indices are inclusive, end indices are exclusive.

11. Comparison with GUTime
SUTime
GUTime
Language
Java
Perl
Timex
TIMEX3 with extensions
TIMEX3 tag, but follows ACE TIMEX2 mostly (extension of TempEx)
Demo
Comments
No support for holidays. Limited support for ranges, ambiguous phrases.
Some support for holidays. No support for ranges, poor support for years that are written out.
TempEval2 (English Test)
Time Expression Identification:
P=0.89, R=0.94, F1=0.91
Attribute Accurate:
Type=0.94, Value=0.72
P=0.89, R=0.79, F1=0.84
Type=0.95, Value=0.68

12. SUTime and GUTime examples
Type
SUTime
GUTime
Date
<TIMEX3 tid="t1" value=" " type="DATE">October of 1963</TIMEX3>
<TIMEX3 tid="t1" TYPE="DATE" VAL="196310">October of 1963</TIMEX3>
Duration
<TIMEX3 tid="t1" TYPE="DURATION" VAL="P56Y">fifty six years</TIMEX3>
Set
<TIMEX3 tid="t1" value="XXXX-WXX-7" type="SET" quant="every third" periodicity="P3W">Every third Sunday</TIMEX3>
<TIMEX3 tid="t1" TYPE="DATE" SET="YES" VAL="XXXXWXX-0" PERIODICITY="F3W" GRANULARITY="G1D">Every third Sunday</TIMEX3>

13. Examples (GUTime unsupported)
Type
SUTime
GUTime
Time
<TIMEX3 tid="t1" value=" T17:05:00" type="TIME">5:05 in the afternoon</TIMEX3>
5:05 in the afternoon
Date - Written out year
<TIMEX3 tid="t1" value="1994-WI" type="DATE">winter of nineteen ninety four</TIMEX3>
<TIMEX3 tid="t1" TYPE="DATE">winter</TIMEX3> of nineteen ninety four
Duration Range
<TIMEX3 tid="t1" alt_value="P2M/P3M" type="DURATION">two to three months</TIMEX3>
two to three months
Reference Date is

14. Examples (SUTime unsupported)
Type
SUTime
GUTime
Holiday
last Christmas
<TIMEX3 tid="t1" TYPE="DATE" ALT_VAL=" ">last Christmas</TIMEX3>
Ambiguous words
The <TIMEX3 tid="t1" value="2011-SP" type="DATE">spring</TIMEX3> water was cool and refreshing
The <TIMEX3 tid="t1" TYPE="DATE">spring</TIMEX3> water was cool and refreshing.
Reference Date is