Topics

Such Questions and the pertaining corpus-architectural considerations interact with at least two more problem areas: on the one hand with the kinds of research questions and of phenomena to be analysed in linguistic and natural interaction research (which may call for certain architectural solutions), and on the other hand with tools for the creation, annotation, manipulation and exploration of XML-based corpora.

The workshop will attempt to address the interplay between the following research areas:

1. XML techniques for corpus representation, i.e. :

   • Standoff annotation vs. embedded annotation;

   • Use of XML linking standards for language data (XLink, XPointer, XPath); other ways of ensuring relationships between levels, e.g. through naming conventions;

   • Concepts of layering in corpora annotated at several levels of linguistic description; types of information grouped together vs. distributed over different "packages"

   • Hierarchical vs. flat annotation;

   • the grounding of annotations (e.g. in XML elements vs. in characters?) and its implications;

   • techniques for the manipulation of XML-based representations for massively annotated corpora; usefulness and relevance of XQuery.

2. Levels of linguistic description and their interaction, i.e.:

   • Examples of richly annotated corpora: reasons for the choice of the annotated levels; linguistic and natural interactivity research questions which can (only) be solved with richly annotated data;

   • Interaction between levels: new research questions in linguistics and natural interactivity research which can only be addressed because of observation across levels, across modalities, etc. An example is the use of clustering techniques across different levels: e.g. relevant cooccurrences of phenomena from different levels identified via clustering;

   • Use and usefulness of concurrent annotations in XML-based corpora; an example is concurrent flat and deep syntactic analysis.

3. Tools for handling richly annotated corpora: Software solutions for, e.g.,

   • corpus creation, transformation, exchange, and validation
   • interactive annotation;
   • exploration: query and retrieval, statistical analysis;
   • corpus management (e.g. wrt. meta-data).

   Tools presented should be positioned with respect to the questions of corpus architecture and with respect to the research directions discussed above under (1) and (2).

The workshop aims at bringing together XML experts, both theorists and practitioners, as well as linguists and natural interactivity researchers working on the definition of corpus architectures, annotation and resource exchange schemes and on tools for the use of multilevel and/or multi-layer annotated corpora. It will provide a forum for the definition of requirements for corpus representations and pertaining tools, discussing at the same time case studies from linguistics and natural interactivity research.