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Article published In: Romance Parsed Corpora
Edited by Christina Tortora, Beatrice Santorini and Frances Blanchette
[Linguistic Variation 18:1] 2018
► pp. 74–99

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Special issue articles

Diachronic syntax based on constituency and dependency annotated corpora

Theoretical and methodological issues

 | Universität Stuttgart
Published online: 13 July 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.00005.ste
Abstract
This contribution presents two syntactically annotated corpora of Old French, Modéliser le changement: les voies du français (MCVF) and the Syntactic Reference Corpus of Medieval French (SRCMF). The focus is on how the underlying syntactic theory (constituency vs. dependency) influences the grammar model and how this choice is reflected in the syntactic annotations of the corpora. The comparison relates to the most relevant general properties of the corpora as well as to two phenomena, null subjects and cleft constructions. Null subjects highlight possible conflicts between syntactic annotation models and syntactic theory, and the information-structural properties of cleft constructions pose a particular problem for the interpretation and annotation of historical corpora. Both phenomena are major instances of diachronic variation in French. The study is relevant for corpus users working on diachronic syntax, as well for corpus builders wishing to design a grammar model for annotation.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Syntactic annotation and variation
    • 1.1Variation in Old French
    • 1.2Parsed corpora of Old French
  • 2.Grammar models and syntactic annotation
    • 2.1Principles of structure
    • 2.2Search strategies
    • 2.3Null subjects
  • 3.Cleft constructions as a phenomenon of linguistic variation
    • 3.1Clefts and information structure
    • 3.2Types of cleft constructions
    • 3.3Clefts in diachrony
      • 3.3.1Latin
      • 3.3.2French
  • 4.Cleft constructions in the Old French corpora
    • 4.1Corpora and queries
    • 4.2Explicit cleft annotation
    • 4.3Unmarked relative clauses
    • 4.4Comparing the corpora
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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