The role of Time Conjunctions in the Identification of Temporal Relations between Tensed-Verb Events in the Contemporary Persian Corpus

This paper involves in prediction of temporal relation between tensed-verb events on the basis of conjunctions in texts. For this purpose, tensed verb event data were extracted from Contemporary Persian Corpus and were examined carefully. The temporal relations between events were identified. After analyzing data on the basis of temporal relation according to Bird’s and Allen’s categorization, it was revealed that temporal conjunctions can be categorized in 4 categories: determined, biased, pseudo random and random. Determined signals can predicate the temporal relation between the events accurately. Biased signals predicate one set of relations with a good estimation, Pseudo random signals doesn’t show any orientation toward any kinds of temporal relation and random signals make almost all kinds of relations possible. The results show that Bird’s prediction on the basis of signals is more desirable than Allen’s.