UCxn: Typologically Informed Annotation of Constructions Atop Universal Dependencies

TL;DR

This paper proposes augmenting Universal Dependencies with a new annotation layer called UCxn to better capture grammatical constructions across languages, using typologically informed methods and a case study of five construction families in ten languages.

Contribution

It introduces the UCxn annotation layer for grammatical constructions and demonstrates a typologically informed approach to identify and compare constructions across languages.

Findings

UCxn enhances UD annotations for constructions

Methodology enables cross-linguistic comparison of constructions

Study provides insights for future constructional annotation in UD

Abstract

The Universal Dependencies (UD) project has created an invaluable collection of treebanks with contributions in over 140 languages. However, the UD annotations do not tell the full story. Grammatical constructions that convey meaning through a particular combination of several morphosyntactic elements -- for example, interrogative sentences with special markers and/or word orders -- are not labeled holistically. We argue for (i) augmenting UD annotations with a 'UCxn' annotation layer for such meaning-bearing grammatical constructions, and (ii) approaching this in a typologically informed way so that morphosyntactic strategies can be compared across languages. As a case study, we consider five construction families in ten languages, identifying instances of each construction in UD treebanks through the use of morphosyntactic patterns. In addition to findings regarding these particular constructions, our study yields important insights on methodology for describing and identifying constructions in language-general and language-particular ways, and lays the foundation for future constructional enrichment of UD treebanks.