Syllabus
Information structure of a sentence (in the Czech traditional terminology: topic-focus articulation) as a semanticly relevant aspect of the sentential structure and means of the expression of the topic-focus articulation in different types of languages.
Treatment of the information structure in the formal description of a language.
Information structure and its annotation in the Prague Dependency Treebank.
Use of the annotated electronic corpus for a verification of linguistic hypotheses, with a special concern on the information structure.
From the structure of the sentence to the discourse structure: how the observations of the sentential structure can be used in the study of different aspects of discourse.
The common stock of knowledge of the speaker and the hearer and the salience of single elements within the stock. Application of the theory in the analysis of texts belonging to different styles.
The reference of expressions in a text, anaphoric relations, coreference.
The treatment of the coreference in the Prague Dependency Treebank; possibilities of an automatic analysis of coreferential relations.
Discourse relations and their treatment in the Prague Dependency Treebank
Annotation
The information structure of a sentence (or according to the Czech traditional terminology, the topic-focus articulation – a division of a sentence into the part the sentence is about and the focus part) is an important starting point for an analysis of higher units than a sentence, namely discourse (text) and its structure. The course will deal with a semantic consequences of the topic-focus articulation, with its treatment in the formal description of a language and with langauge-dependent means of the expression of the topic-focus articulation.
Special attention will be paid to the way in which this aspect of the sentential structure is treated in the electronic Prague Dependency Treebank and to the question how the corpus can be used for a verification of linguistic hypotheses. In the second part of the course, the questions of the discourse structure will be discussed, especially how the observations of the sentential structure can be used in the study of different aspects of discourse.
In this part, we will use the material from Prague Dependency Treebank as well, namely the annotation of coreferential and anaphoric relations. Taught in English.