Re: standardizing linguistic encoding
Piotr Bański <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.text.tei.general |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
Hi Emmanuel,
It's great to hear from you. You may be pleased to hear about a set of
tools that can be used to encode the information you need very
precisely, and to attach that information to objects of any granularity
("standard" tokens, morphs, phrases) and any sort (orthographic,
prosodic, morphological). These tools have been defined jointly by the
TEI and ISO, and the TEI description is free and well-tested, and you
can read about it in the chapter on feature structures:
http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/FS.html
(I'd suggest skipping 18.11 when reading this chapter for the first time)
These tools make it possible for you to describe practically any feature
matrices needed in linguistics. And the TEI has mechanisms for attaching
them to linguistic/textual objects.
If you'd like to pursue this further, you may be interested in joining
the TEI Linguistics SIG mailing list at
https://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A0=TEI-LINGUISTICS
where we have just talked about cases slightly more complex than the
kind of attribute-based markup discussed here.
Best regards,
Piotr
On 02/03/17 17:38, Emmanuel NGUE UM wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am an African-Based linguist, and I have been following much of the
> discussions going on over TEI mailing list.
>
> I am not a TEI practitioner per se, but I am aware of the many
> application scenarios of this technology, including text corpora building.
>
> A couple of months ago, I sent an e-mail around via TEI mailing list
> asking whether anyone knew of any TEI based/inspired framework for the
> encoding of prosodic phenomena such as tones, especially in African tone
> languages. I got one or two responses from members. Unfortunately these
> responses did not address my specific concern.
>
> I wish to join on-going discussions about 'standardizing linguistic
> encoding', to bring to the fore of TEI standards development, the issue
> of "tone encoding".
>
> For the sake of clarification and given that not every one is
> necessarily an expert in tone languages, let me explain by examples what
> tone is in African tone languages.
>
> Given the followings tokens from Basaa, a bantu language spoken in Cameroon:
>
> (1) hól : to sharpen
>
> (2) hòl : to pay the dawry
>
> (3) hôl (as in /á hôl/): let him sharpen
>
> (4) hŏl : pay the dawry! (imperative)
>
> In (1) through (4), the difference in meaning of these words is
> attributed to the difference in relative pitch level of the syllable:
> "high" in (1), "low" in (2), contour or two-level "low-high" in (3),
> contour or two-level "low-high" in (4).
>
> While the semantics associated with tone levels in (1) and (2) is
> lexically encoded, the ones in (3) and (4) are complemented with
> grammatical information, namely hortative in (3) and imperative in (4),
> thus resulting in complex (contour) tone shapes in writing.
>
> Tone representation in the above examples is graphical, and is meant to
> simply anchor pitch melody; this form of representation does not inform
> much about the semantics associated with a specific pitch level in and
> accross words. This is so mostly because pitch 'labels' (high, low,
> low-high, high-low) do not encode persistent meaning, but may instead
> trigger each and array of grammatical information such as tense, mood,
> aspect, negation, ect., depending on the context.
>
> I personally believe that for better processeability and representation
> of textual information in tone langues, there is need for developping
> unambiguous encoding framework devoid of graphical representation of
> tones, and I believe TEI to be one possible response to this.
>
> Because TEI is an open standard which is meant to be tailored to the
> specific needs of users, I think it is our responsiblity as Africanists
> and Bantuists, to raise TEI community's awarness about accounting for
> the specificities of the languages we are working on, when it comes to
> standardizing linguistic encoding.
>
> Best
>
> Emmanuel Ngué Um
> Language Archivist for ALORA
>
> 2017-02-02 14:03 GMT+01:00 Eduard Drenth <[email protected]
> <mailto:[email protected]>>:
>
> Thanks for your response! Standard in my case means practical,
> usable way for encoding linguistic information in corpora using TEI.
>
> Indeed the theme is covered by
> https://github.com/LingSIG/wordAttributes/wiki
> <https://github.com/LingSIG/wordAttributes/wiki>. Good to know of
> this http://wiki.tei-c.org/index.php/SIG:TEI_for_Linguists
> <http://wiki.tei-c.org/index.php/SIG:TEI_for_Linguists> as well.
>
> We choose to continue along the choosen path, it doesn't deviate too
> much from uncustomized TEI, offers good support for editing and
> querying, satisfies our linguists, adheres to
> http://universaldependencies.org <http://universaldependencies.org>
> and is easy to convert to the 'real standard' when it is released.
>
> Perhaps our approach can be useful input for
> https://github.com/LingSIG/wordAttributes
> <https://github.com/LingSIG/wordAttributes>, it is the result of
> quite extensive testing and discussing.
>
> Eduard Drenth, Software Architekt
>
> [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
>
> Doelestrjitte 8
> 8911 DX Ljouwert
> +31 58 234 30 47 <tel:%2B31%2058%20234%2030%2047>
>
> gpg:
> https://sks-keyservers.net/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x065EF82A1E02CC43
> <https://sks-keyservers.net/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x065EF82A1E02CC43>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Piotr Bański <[email protected]
> <mailto:[email protected]>>
> Sent: Thursday, February 2, 2017 12:24 PM
> To: Eduard Drenth; [email protected]
> <mailto:[email protected]>; Phillip Ströbel
> Subject: Re: standardizing linguistic encoding
>
> Dear Eduard, [also addressing Philip and actually all... ]
>
> It's probably my conditioning as a member of various standardization
> bodies that makes red lights flash in my head upon reading that you are
> "developing a standard"... :-) I believe that standards are better
> "developed" (or, more precisely, codified) on the basis of existing best
> practices or other existing standards. As it is, I can observe that your
> proposed encoding mixes up the level of tokens with the level of word
> forms (in ISO MAF terminology[1]), and while it can be suitable for your
> purposes, it is far from optimal in standardization terms.
>
> [at this point, the camera pans out]
>
> This year promises to be quite exciting for the TEI Linguistics SIG[2],
> given that:
>
> (1) ISO LMF [3] is up for renewal and restructuring, and that several
> teams (among others, from ENeL, PARTHENOS, CLARIN, and LingSIG) are
> currently working on various modules for it,
>
> (2) ISO Tiger [4] is nearing publication (as in: weeks rather than
> months) and opening a way for ISO TEIger, a TEI serialization of the ISO
> model for syntactic encoding,
>
> (3) there is a rising push for streamlining inline linguistic markup,
> coming from, among others, Martin Mueller's Early Print Project, BBAW's
> existing practice (presented by Susanne Haaf at various TEI meetings),
> the Ancient Greek Dependency Treebank (represented in this mailing list
> by Giuseppe Celano, I believe), and now we learn of Philip Ströbel's
> project and yours. And there are others. A tiny reflex of that is
> contained at the LingSIG GitHub space [5], which is only meant as a
> _seed_ for collaborative effort rather than any personal statement.
>
> Andreas Witt and I are thinking of how to address and channel this
> boiling mass of initiatives. One possibility could be to target the
> upcoming TEI Members Meeting[6] and have a focused pre-conference
> workshop designed to formulate a very precise and very concrete proposal
> for grammatical encoding synchronized across inline, standoff and
> dictionary markup, a proposal that we could submit to the TEI Technical
> Council at the end of the day. "The day" seems distant, but if we want
> to have a serious proposal at the end of it, work should start about
> now.
>
> May I invite all interested parties to join the Linguistics SIG mailing
> list (by going to [7]) and GitHub space (by sending me, off-list, your
> github username), and to, well, have a go at it... :-)
>
> Best regards,
>
> Piotr
>
> [1]:
> http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=51934
> <http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=51934>
> [2]: http://wiki.tei-c.org/index.php/SIG:TEI_for_Linguists
> <http://wiki.tei-c.org/index.php/SIG:TEI_for_Linguists>
> [3]:
> http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=68516
> <http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=68516>
> [4]:
> http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=62491
> <http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=62491>
> [5]: https://github.com/LingSIG/wordAttributes/wiki
> <https://github.com/LingSIG/wordAttributes/wiki>
> [6]: http://members.tei-c.org/Events/meetings
> <http://members.tei-c.org/Events/meetings>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 02/01/17 16:51, Eduard Drenth wrote:
> > Dear all,
> >
> > Here in Holland we are developing a standard to encode linguistic and
> > lemma information for various word situations using TEI. We have been
> > trying several solutions (tei:fs/tei:f, tei:interp, tei:span, ...) and
> > finaly chose for TEI customization which gives us standard xsd
> > validation, editor support and a simple focused solution. For
> linguistic
> > terminology we use as much as possible
> http://universaldependencies.org/ <http://universaldependencies.org/>.
> >
> >
> > We are curious as to what you think, see below for details. We
> hope this
> > solution may be of use for those who want to encode linguistic
> > information using TEI. Also this may help standardizing linguistic
> > encoding in TEI.
> >
> >
> > If this all is worthwhile I would like to donate/publish the solution
> > somewhere.
> >
> >
> > snippet customization:
> >
> >
> > <schemaSpec ident="tdb" docLang="en" prefix="tei_"
> > xml:lang="en">
> >
> > ..
> >
> > ..
> >
> > <classSpec type="atts" ident="att.linguistics"
> > module="analytics">
> >
> > <attList>
> > <attDef ident="linguistics"
> > ns="http://www.fryske-akademy.org/grammar/1.0
> <http://www.fryske-akademy.org/grammar/1.0>">
> > <desc>
> > documentation....
> > </desc>
> > <datatype maxOccurs="unbounded">
> > <dataRef key="teiata.enumerated"/>
> > </datatype>
> > <valList type="closed">
> > <valItem ident="Features.Abbr">
> > <desc>Boolean feature. Is this an
> > abbreviation?</desc>
> > </valItem>
> > <valItem ident="Features.Poss">
> > <desc>Boolean feature of pronouns,
> > determiners or adjectives. It tells whether the word is
> possessive.</desc>
> > </valItem>
> > <valItem ident="PronType.Prs">
> > <desc>personal pronoun or
> > determiner</desc>
> > </valItem>
> >
> > ..
> >
> > ..
> >
> >
> > example word encoding:
> >
> >
> > <tei:w fa:linguistics="Pos.NOUN "
> > lemmaRef="inprogress://lemmasystem/Hollands/frik/1"
> > lemma="frik">Frik</tei:w>
> >
> >
> > example split word encoding:
> >
> >
> > <tei:w xml:id="staet-op-176" rendition="#split">staet</tei:w>
> >
> > <tei:w fa:linguistics="Pos.ADV "
> > lemmaRef="inprogress://lemmasystem/Hollands/al/3"
> > lemma="al">al</tei:w><tei:w>wringende</tei:w>
> >
> > <tei:w xml:id="staet-op-179" rendition="#split">op</tei:w>
> >
> > <tei:join result="w" scope="root" lemma="opstean"
> target="#staet-op-176
> > #staet-op-179" lemmaRef="inprogress://lemmasystem/Hollands/opstean/1"
> > fa:linguistics="th-si-pa Pos.VERB "/>
> >
> >
> > example word consist of more lemma's (we don't use this yet....):
> >
> >
> > <tei:choice>
> > <tei:orig>
> > <tei:w fa:linguistics=".....">aint</tei:w>
> > </tei:orig>
> > <tei:reg>
> > <tei:w lemma="be" fa:linguistics="...">am</tei:w>
> > <tei:w lemma="not" fa:linguistics="...">not</tei:w>
> > </tei:reg>
> > </tei:choice>
> >
> >
> > Bye,
> >
> >
> > Eduard Drenth, Software Architekt
> >
> >
> > [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
> >
> >
> > Doelestrjitte 8
> >
> > 8911 DX Ljouwert
> >
> > +31 58 234 30 47 <tel:%2B31%2058%20234%2030%2047>
> >
> >
> > gpg:
> https://sks-keyservers.net/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x065EF82A1E02CC43
> <https://sks-keyservers.net/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x065EF82A1E02CC43>
> >
>
> --
> Piotr Bański, Ph.D.
> Senior Researcher,
> Institut für Deutsche Sprache,
> R5 6-13
> 68-161 Mannheim, Germany
>
>
--
Piotr Bański, Ph.D.
Senior Researcher,
Institut für Deutsche Sprache,
R5 6-13
68-161 Mannheim, Germany