Annotating thematic features in English and Spanish

A contrastive corpus-based study

Authors

  • Jorge Arús Universidad Complutense de Madrid
  • Julia Lavid Universidad Comlutense de Madrid
  • Lara Moratón Universidad Complutense de Madrid

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/lhs.v6i1-3.173

Keywords:

annotation scheme, discourse analysis, Theme

Abstract

In this paper we present the preliminary results of an empirical study designed to test contrastive features of the category of Theme in English and Spanish through corpus analysis and manual annotation. Using as our theoretical basis the more general features of the model of thematisation proposed in Lavid, Arús and Zamorano (2010), the study describes the different steps of the methodology used, starting with the selection of the corpus used as a ‘training suite’, followed by the design of the annotation scheme, and ending with a discussion of the results of two annotation experiments carried out so far to test the reproducibility of the annotation scheme. It is expected that the work reported in this paper has a theoretical impact on the area of contrastive corpus studies and serves as the basis for the (semi)-automatic annotation of thematic features in larger bilingual corpora.

Author Biographies

  • Jorge Arús, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

    Jorge Arús Hita teaches English language and linguistics at the Facultad de Filología Inglesa, Universidad Complutense de Madrid. His publications include articles on contrastive linguistics and second-language teaching, within the systemic functional framework, in various national and international journals and edited volumes. He has been copy-editor of Atlantis and is currently b-learning coordinator at the School of Language of Linguistics, UCM.

  • Julia Lavid, Universidad Comlutense de Madrid

    Julia Lavid is Full Professor in English Linguistics and Head of the Department of English Philology I, Universidad Complutense of Madrid (Spain), where she teaches several courses on English Linguistics, Computational and Corpus Linguistics, and the contrastive analysis and translation of English and Spanish. She has been team leader of several international projects financed by the European Commission and is now the team leader of a research group on Functional Linguistics and its Applications at UCM with the participation of both national and international researchers. Her research expertise focuses on functional and corpus-based approaches to the study of English in contrast with other languages, as well as their application to educational and computational contexts. Her most recent research focuses on the creation and validation of English-Spanish contrastive descriptions through corpus analysis and annotation, financed by the Spanish Ministry of Science Innovation within the CONTRANOT project. She has an extensive record of publications in international volumes and is the author of the book Lenguaje y Nuevas tecnologías: Nuevas Perspectivas, Métodos y Herramientas para el lingüista del siglo XXI (Madrid, Cátedra, 2005), and coauthor of the research monograph Systemic-Functional Grammar of Spanish: a Contrastive Account with English (London: Continuum, 2010).

  • Lara Moratón, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

    Lara Moratón is affiliated to Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

References

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Published

2012-12-13

Issue

Section

Thematic Structure and Meaning

How to Cite

Arús, J., Lavid, J., & Moratón, L. (2012). Annotating thematic features in English and Spanish: A contrastive corpus-based study. Linguistics and the Human Sciences, 6(1-3), 173-192. https://doi.org/10.1558/lhs.v6i1-3.173

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