Annotating descriptively incomplete language phenomena

Abstract

When annotating non-standard languages, descriptively incomplete language phenomena (EA-GLES, 1996) are often encountered. In this paper, we present examples of ambiguous forms taken from a historical corpus and offer a classification of such descriptively incomplete language phenomena and its rationale. We then discuss various approaches to the annotation of these phenomena, arguing that multiple annotations provide the most appropriate encoding strategy for the annotator. Finally, we show how multiple annotations can be encoded in existing standards such as PAULA and GrAF.