Information for
Quick links
Faculties
Decomposing Decomposition in Time
Our chair has been awarded a DFG-funded project to work on decompositional adverbials („Decomposing Decomposition in Time“) which has already started to fund several students. The project began work on July 1, 2021. (Abstract)
We are creating a layer of semantic annotations on top of a syntactically annotated corpora. This diachronic data covers all of English language history: from Old English to around 1900 (YCOE [1], PPCHE [2]). The natural language phenomena we are annotating for are decompositional items (e.g. again, almost).
With an exhaustive semantic annotation aligned with a syntactic annotation we close empirical gaps and increase the resolution in the empirical basis for the investigation of decompositionality at the syntax-semantics interface. Our annotations are context-based and multiply annotated.
The finished product of our project will consist of a standoff annotation layer and an alignment tool (Python 3.x) (along with the appropriate ‘quick-start’ documentation). The goal is to allow users align their own purchased versions of the PPCHE corpora with our semantic annotations.
Downloads
NOTE: Due to file-suffix restrictions, the user has to manually change the ".txt" ending to a ".py" ending for the Python-based alignment tool.
Project Publications
Bablli, M. & R. Gergel (2025). Towards reproducing semantic change: an iterative in Syrian Arabic. In A Festschrift in Honour of Regine Eckardt, 16-32, ed. by E. Csipak, J. David & M. Liu. Berlin: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Publication link
Gergel, R. (2024) Yet another player in the 're' domain: The redirectional (send-it-somewhere-else) reading. In Baumann, G. ,D. Gutzmann, J. Koopman, K. Liefke, A. Renans, and T. Scheffler. Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 28. Bochum: Ruhr-University Bochum, 303-317. Publication Link
Gergel, R. & M. Kopf. (2024) On the evolutionary Profile of again and complex predicates: The Decomposition Corpus. Talk presented as Formal Diachronic Semantics 9. Bologna, Italy. [pdf]
Gergel, R. & M. Puhl. (forth.) nommo (‘again’): evidence for an interface-based co-imprint of iteratives. Forthcoming in Syntax aus Saarbrücker Sicht. Prepublication draft
Kopf, M. (2025) High Presuppositions in Change. Dissertation, Saarland University. [pdf]
Kopf, M., M. Bablli, M. Rajestari, D. Rebar & R. Gergel (2023) Decomposing decomposition in time: a methodological investigation. Preproceedings of 14th Tbilisi Symposium on Logic, Language and Computation (TbiLLC 2023). [pdf]
Kopf, M. & R. Gergel (2023) Annotating Decomposition in Time: Three Approaches for Again. In Proceedings of the 17th Linguistic Annotation Workshop (LAW-XVII), pages 129–135, Toronto, Canada. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Kopf, M. & R. Gergel (2025) Decomposing decomposition in time: A methodological investigation. To be published in the Proceedings of TbiLLC 2023 the Springer Nature Lecture Notes in Computer Science. [pdf]
