Toward the morpho-syntactic annotation of an Old English corpus with universal dependencies

Javier Martín Arista

doi:10.4995/rlyla.2022.16787

Authors

Javier Martín Arista Universidad de La Rioja https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9900-0104

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4995/rlyla.2022.16787

Keywords:

Universal Dependencies, Treebanks, Syntactic Annotation, Old English

Abstract

The aim of this article is to take the first steps toward the compilation of a treebank of Old English compatible with the framework of Universal Dependencies (UD). Such a treebank will comprise morphological and syntactic annotation of Old English texts adequate for cross-linguistic comparison, diachronic analysis and natural language processing. The article, therefore, engages in four tasks: (i) identifying the Old English exponents of UD lexical categories; (ii) selecting the Old English exponents of UD morphological features; (iii) finding the areas of Old English morphology that require token indexing in the UD format; and (iv) checking on the relevance of the universal set of dependency relations. The data have been extracted from ParCorOEv2, an open access annotated parallel corpus Old English-English. The main conclusions are that the annotation format calls for two additional fields (gloss and morphological relatedness) and that enhanced dependencies are required in order to account for some syntactic phenomena.

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Author Biography

Javier Martín Arista, Universidad de La Rioja

Professor Javier Martín Arista teaches Old English and Linguistics at the University of La Rioja. He has published widely in linguistics journals. He is the PI of the Nerthus Project (www.nerthusproject.com), which deals with advanced corpus linguistics, computational linguistic analysis, digital humanities and electronic lexicography of Old English.

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