Constructions at argument-structure level in the SenSem Corpora

• Published in: Language Resources and Evaluation Vol. 49; no. 3; pp. 637 - 658
• Main Authors: Vazquez, Gloria, Fernandez-Montraveta, Ana
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer 01.09.2015; Springer Netherlands; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Annotations; Argument structure; Catalan language; Categories; Classification; Computational Linguistics; Computer Science; Construction; Construction grammar; Grammar; Grammatical case; Grammatical subject; Hierarchies; Impersonal constructions; Language and Literature; Linguistics; Meaning; Original Paper; Pronouns; Semantic relations; Semantics; Sentences; Social Sciences; Spanish language; Syntactic structures; Verbs; United States > US; Chicago Illinois; Spain; Topicalization; Argument structure; Detopicalization; Constructions; Subcategorization frames; Pronominal constructions
• ISSN: 1574-020X; 1572-8412; 1574-0218
• DOI: 10.1007/s10579-015-9309-4

In this paper we present the annotation scheme of constructions at the argument-structure level in the Spanish and Catalan Corpora SenSem. Constructions are accounted for as form-meaning pairs following the theoretical underpinning of Construction Grammar. Regarding meaning, we propose a hierarchy of constructions taking into account, at the highest level, the prominence of the logical subject in the sentence. Thus, we differentiate between topicalized and detopicalized sentences, which is an innovative proposal to solve some terminological issues related to pronominal constructions in Spanish. We further develop this classification taking into account the semantic relation of the logical subject with the verb and its coindexation, if any, with other participants. As regards form, the basic features we consider are syntagmatic categories and syntactic functions. Furthermore, we annotate the form the verb requires, that is, if it requires a pronoun in order to convey a particular meaning. Other relevant contributions are the annotation of some linguistic phenomena not taken into account in other similar resources, such as reciprocal, dative or impersonal constructions. Finally, we present the frequencies of all these constructions in Spanish.