Contrastive corpus annotation in the CONTRANOT project

Abstract

In this paper we outline a number of issues and problems which arise during the process of contrastive human-coded corpus annotation of certain semantic and discourse categories within the framework of the CONTRANOT project, aimed at the creation and validation of contrastive functional descriptions through corpus analysis and annotation. Human-coded corpus annotation is a preliminary step for the training of computer algorithms which allow the automation of the annotation of large corpora, but it can also serve as a mechanism for testing aspects of linguistic theories empirically, such as theory formation and theory-redefinition, as well as enriching theories with quantitative information. The work reported in this paper focuses on the annotation of the category of Thematisation, on the one hand, and on Modality, on the other, to illustrate the challenges researchers have to face when confronted with the task of developing well-designed and reliable annotation procedures for complex linguistic phenomena in a contrastive manner. We describe the annotation tasks and procedures developed so far, which include the design of annotation schemas on the basis of available linguistic theories and the testing of their reliability through agreement studies. We also evaluate and discuss the results of the annotations on the basis of their relevance for the theoretical characterisation of the investigated phenomena. We expect that our work will have an impact in the area of contrastive textual analysis, and that it will pave the way for the development of automated annotation systems for computational applications.

La cláusula como movimiento interactivo: una perspectiva semántico-discursiva de la gramática interpersonal del español

“…Lavid et al 2010). Otro patrón gramatical clave para distinguirlas como gramaticalización congruente de órdenes es la posición de los elementos clíticos.…”

“…Esto explica por qué el tradicional "sujeto gramatical", entendido en términos de relaciones sintagmáticas de concordancia, puede o no estar presente en la estructura, ya que no define el estatus de la cláusula española como intercambio. En este sentido, se plantea aquí una discrepancia fundamental con la interpretación del español propuesta por Lavid et al (2010), que sí dan por sentada la existencia de un Sujeto en la estructura interpersonal de la cláusula española (cf. 2010: 237).…”

“…Lavid et al (2010), de hecho, concuerdan con la irrelevancia de una función Finito en español peninsular, apuntando a patrones estructurales ya mencionados: la ausencia de coletillas interrogativas similares al inglés, la recuperación del grupo verbal completo en cláusulas elípticas y la irrelevancia de un Finito discreto para la distinción de modos clausales (cf. 2010: 242-243).…”

Noun Phrases as expressions of evidentiality: an analysis of four English abstract nouns and their Spanish equivalents

“…The appositive cases are considered part of the Rheme, since they appear at the end of sentences. In the literature on information structure, there is almost unanimous agreement (Firbas 1992;Halliday & Matthiessen 2014;Lavid et al 2010) that in English and Spanish the more important information tends to occur in late parts of the clause, so by and large, the Rheme may be considered as having more communicative weight than the Theme.…”

“…Theme, the point of departure of the clause, is realised by first position, and Rheme is the rest of the clause. The approach followed is that of Lavid et al (2010), according to which the Theme can comprise either one syntactic constituent, for example a Subject (labelled Thematic Head), or more than one element, as when a clause starts with an Adjunct (PreHead) followed by the Subject (Thematic Head). 11 The rest of the constituents make up the Rheme.…”