Representation of linguistic information and word and sentence alignments in XML files

Dear members of the TEI community,

I have several questions regarding the annotation of linguistic information in a corpus consisting of XML documents.

We would like to add parsing information to sentences. We represent a normal sentence like this:

<s id="a1-s6" lang="de">
        <w id="a1-s6-w1" lemma="d" pos="ART">Die</w>
        <w id="a1-s6-w2" lemma="weit" pos="ADJA">weiten</w>
        <w id="a1-s6-w3" lemma="," pos="$,">,</w>
        <w id="a1-s6-w4" lemma="öde" pos="ADJA">öden</w>
        <w id="a1-s6-w5" lemma="Gebiet" pos="NN">Gebiete</w>
        <w id="a1-s6-w6" lemma="," pos="$,">,</w>
        <w id="a1-s6-w7" lemma="d" pos="PRELS">die</w>
        <w id="a1-s6-w8" lemma="Kälte" pos="NN">Kälte</w>
        <w id="a1-s6-w9" lemma="," pos="$,">,</w>
        <w id="a1-s6-w10" lemma="d" pos="PRELS">der</w>
        <w id="a1-s6-w11" lemma="Schnee" pos="NN">Schnee</w>
        <w id="a1-s6-w12" lemma="sein" pos="VAFIN">sind</w>
        <w id="a1-s6-w13" lemma="mein" pos="PPOSAT">meine</w>
        <w id="a1-s6-w14" lemma="bevorzugt" pos="ADJA">bevorzugte</w>
        <w id="a1-s6-w15" lemma="Umgebung" pos="NN">Umgebung</w>
        <w id="a1-s6-w16" lemma=";" pos="$.">;</w>
 </s>

The "a1" in the sentence and word IDs corresponds the article in which a sentence occurs. Moreover, we have a lemma and a part-of-speech tag (pos) for every word.

Our first idea is to include the parsing information directly in the w-elements, which would look like this:

<s id="a1-s6" lang="de">
        <w deprel="DET" head="a1-s6-w5" id="a1-s6-w1" lemma="d" pos="ART">Die</w>
        <w deprel="ATTR" head="a1-s6-w5" id="a1-s6-w2" lemma="weit" pos="ADJA">weiten</w>
        <w deprel="-PUNCT-" head="a1-s6-w2" id="a1-s6-w3" lemma="," pos="$,">,</w>
        <w deprel="KON" head="a1-s6-w2" id="a1-s6-w4" lemma="öde" pos="ADJA">öden</w>
        <w deprel="NEB" head="a1-s6-w12" id="a1-s6-w5" lemma="Gebiet" pos="NN">Gebiete</w>
        <w deprel="-PUNCT-" head="a1-s6-w5" id="a1-s6-w6" lemma="," pos="$,">,</w>
        <w deprel="SUBJ" head="a1-s6-w12" id="a1-s6-w7" lemma="d" pos="PRELS">die</w>
        <w deprel="PRED" head="a1-s6-w12" id="a1-s6-w8" lemma="Kälte" pos="NN">Kälte</w>
        <w deprel="-PUNCT-" head="a1-s6-w8" id="a1-s6-w9" lemma="," pos="$,">,</w>
        <w deprel="DET" head="a1-s6-w11" id="a1-s6-w10" lemma="d" pos="PRELS">der</w>
        <w deprel="KON" head="a1-s6-w8" id="a1-s6-w11" lemma="Schnee" pos="NN">Schnee</w>
        <w head="root" id="a1-s6-w12" lemma="sein" pos="VAFIN">sind</w>
        <w deprel="DET" head="a1-s6-w15" id="a1-s6-w13" lemma="mein" pos="PPOSAT">meine</w>
        <w deprel="ATTR" head="a1-s6-w15" id="a1-s6-w14" lemma="bevorzugt" pos="ADJA">bevorzugte</w>
        <w deprel="PRED" head="a1-s6-w12" id="a1-s6-w15" lemma="Umgebung" pos="NN">Umgebung</w>
        <w deprel="-PUNCT-" head="a1-s6-w15" id="a1-s6-w16" lemma=";" pos="$.">;</w>
</s>

Every word has another word ID from the same sentences as its head (except for the root) and every w-element specifies the dependency relation to the head (except for the root). 

Is this a practical solution?

Moreover, we would like to integrate sentence alignment information, since we are working with a multilingual corpus.

Our idea is to integrate this information directly into the s-elements (like we do for articles which are translated). This could look like in the following:

<s id="a1-s6" lang="de" alignment_targets="SAC-Jahrbuch_1990_fr.xml:a1-s5">

The alignment target specifies the article and sentence ID in the yearbook in the other language which corresponds to the current s-element. Or would it be better to provide this information in a link group or just link element and then have the words in another, separate element?

<s id="a1-s6" lang="de">
    <link xtype="1-2" xtargets="SAC-Jahrbuch_1990_fr.xml:a1-s5;SAC-Jahrbuch_1990_fr.xml:a1-s6"/>
    <words>
        <w deprel="DET" head="a1-s6-w5" id="a1-s6-w1" lemma="d" pos="ART">Die</w>
        <w deprel="ATTR" head="a1-s6-w5" id="a1-s6-w2" lemma="weit" pos="ADJA">weiten</w>
        <w deprel="-PUNCT-" head="a1-s6-w2" id="a1-s6-w3" lemma="," pos="$,">,</w>
        <w deprel="KON" head="a1-s6-w2" id="a1-s6-w4" lemma="öde" pos="ADJA">öden</w>
        ....
    </words>
</s>

Same for word alignment: Separate link groups or alignment information directly in the w-elements, like so:

<w deprel="DET" head="a1-s6-w5" id="a1-s6-w1" lemma="d" pos="ART" alignment_targets="SAC-Jahrbuch_1990_fr.xml:a1-s6-w1 SAC-Jahrbuch_1990_it.xml:a1-s5-w1>Die</w>

I'm looking forward to your suggestions.

Kind regards,

Philllip