Syntactic annotation – phrase structure principles

The annotation is encoded via labelled bracketing and is designed to facilitate efficient searching, rather than to reflect a particular analysis of Middle Low German.

Some key points:

  • Relatively flat trees
  • Multiple branching is possible
  • No VP – the verb and its objects are sisters and immediately dominated by IP
  • No intermediate phrase levels (i.e. bar-levels)
  • NP arguments are distinguished from NP adjuncts at IP-level
  • PP arguments are not distinguished from PP adjuncts

Heads and phrases

In general, heads project a corresponding phrase.

Categories which never project a phrase:

  • verbs (V)
  • determiners (D)
  • particles (PTK)
  • single-word modifiers (see below)
  • interjections (ITJ)

Categories which can project a phrase but can also be immediately dominated by IP:

  • conjunctions (KON)

Phrase types which do not necessarily have a head of the same category:

  • IP – since there is no I tag for verbs
  • NP – which may have a noun (NA) as its head, but can also be headed by a personal pronoun (PPER/PRF), a demonstrative pronoun (DPDS/DPIS) or a proper noun (NE)

A foreign word (tagged FM) may also head a phrase, resulting in exocentricty:

(PP (FM Ad)           ← FM heads PP
    (NP (FM hebreos))   ← FM heads NP
)

Complements

Complements always project a phrase.

Modifiers

Modifiers are treated as daughters of the phrasal node and sisters to the head.

Note that a modifier only projects a phrase when it is itself modified:

(NP-OB1 (DDARTA de)
        (ADJA ersten)  ← modifier not further modified; doesn't project
        (NA troyen)
)

(NP-SBJ (ADJP (DDA sodane)  ← modifier of modifier
              (ADJA edel)) ← modifier further modified; projects
        (NA land)
)

Selectional restrictions

The annotation observes certain selectional restrictions:

  • Prepositions should have exactly one nominal (NP) or clausal (CP) complement
  • Any NP which is immediately contained by another NP must be a nominal complement (NP-COMP), genitive (NP-POS) or appositive (NP-PRN)
  • All finite clauses must have a subject (NP-SBJ), whether overt or empty
  • Certain categories can occur a maximum of once per clause (but need not appear at all). This applies to direct (NP-OB1), indirect objects (NP-OB2), nominal predicates (NP-PRD) and adjectival predicates (ADJP-PRD)