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Contrastive Studies in Verbal Valency
Edited by Lars Hellan, Andrej L. Malchukov and Michela Cennamo
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 237] 2017
► pp. 109–149

A labeling system for valency

Linguistic coverage and applications

| University of Ghana
| Norwegian University of Science and Technology

We illustrate a format for valence representation called the Construction Labeling system (CL), earlier presented in Hellan and Dakubu 2010, which can be used in annotation of single examples and in enumerations and collections of valency types. It is applicable across language families and has been used for Germanic, Kwa, Ethio-Semitic, Bantu and Indo-Aryan languages. It is formally defined so as to be interoperable with digital and computational applications. The illustration of the format will first be done for the closely related languages Norwegian and English, and then contrasting these to Ga (spoken in Ghana). Among digital utilizations of the system we mention a multilingual valency repository and a strategy of grammar induction from annotated text.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The Construction Labeling (CL) notation
  • 3.Labeling valence patterns of English and Norwegian
    • 3.1Syntactic argument structure of Norwegian
    • 3.2Illustrating CL on simple patterns in Norwegian and English
    • 3.3Shared complex patterns
    • 3.4Un-shared complex patterns
    • 3.5Valency profiles
  • 4.Valency and construction patterns of Ga
    • 4.1Patterns
    • 4.2Summarizing remarks
  • 5.Utilizing CL notation in Grammar and in Ontology
    • 5.1Grammatical interpretation of CL templates
    • 5.2Induction of grammar from Interlinear Glossed Text (IGT) and CL jointly
    • 5.3Using CL templates for designing a construction ontology.
  • 6.‘Life cycles’ of systems and applications using CL
  • 7.Comparisons with Coding frames in ValPal
  • 8.Final remarks
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 30 April 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.237.04kro
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