UD4HL is a discussion group on the annotation of treebanks of historical languages.

Why starting this group

We found several reasons to start this discussion group:

• only few HLs are included in Universal Dependencies
• the number of researchers that actively use treebanks for HLs is limited
• treebanks of HLs often have errors due to conversions from other formats
• treebanks of HLs sometimes show inconsistencies in the annotation of comparable contructions
• HLs lack targeted annotation guidelines for specific construction that don't have straightforward equivalents in modern languages

We believe that creating a discussion group such as UD4HL could improve communication among scholars who work with historical languages (HLs) and ultimately lead to better resources and guidelines. Additionally, UD4HL would improve communication between the communities of HL researchers and UD developers due to the diverse backgrounds of the individuals in the group.

Our initiative is not intended to replace or compete with the existing UD community and its ongoing discussions. Rather, we aim to establish a bridge between researchers who specialize in historical languages and the UD community. We believe that this collaboration will facilitate mutual learning and foster a deeper understanding of linguistic diversity. Our goal is to complement and enhance the ongoing efforts of the UD community, rather than to replace them.

Outcomes

As an outcome of the discussions we plan to carry on within this group, we expect to start a process of correction and standardization of the already existing resources and to write better guidelines for researchers that will annotate treebanks for HLs in the future.

Some preliminnary results were presented at the workshop Exploiting standardized cross-linguistic data in historical linguistics organized by Robert Forkel, Gerard Jäger and Johann-Mattis List at the International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL26, 4-8 September 2023).

You can download the ICHL26 presentation from here.

How to take part in the discussion

We plan to conduct our discussion in the issue page of this repository.

We will also use this space to share information about what researchers in this group are doing or have already done related to treebanks and HLs. Information about these projects will be collected here; this will allow the community to know about the ongoing projects and collaborate, if possible.

If you want to share information about your project(s), please send the relevant information about the project(s) to luca.brigadavilla@unibg.it.

Join UD4HL

If you want to join the discussion group and be informed about the upcoming meetings, please fill in this form!

Contacts

• Silvia Luraghi: luraghi@unipv.it

• Chiara Zanchi: chiara.zanchi01@unipv.it

• Erica Biagetti: erica.biagetti@unipv.it

• Luca Brigada Villa: luca.brigadavilla@unibg.it