A Common XML-based Framework for Syntactic Annotations

TL;DR

This paper presents a flexible XML-based framework for various syntactic annotations, aiming to standardize and facilitate resource reuse and comparison across different annotation schemes.

Contribution

It introduces an abstract model adaptable to multiple annotation types, enhancing interoperability and evaluation of syntactic annotation schemes.

Findings

Framework supports diverse annotation types

Enables comparative evaluation of parser outputs

Facilitates resource sharing and standardization

Abstract

It is widely recognized that the proliferation of annotation schemes runs counter to the need to re-use language resources, and that standards for linguistic annotation are becoming increasingly mandatory. To answer this need, we have developed a framework comprised of an abstract model for a variety of different annotation types (e.g., morpho-syntactic tagging, syntactic annotation, co-reference annotation, etc.), which can be instantiated in different ways depending on the annotator's approach and goals. In this paper we provide an overview of the framework, demonstrate its applicability to syntactic annotation, and show how it can contribute to comparative evaluation of parser output and diverse syntactic annotation schemes.