Annotating corpus data for a quantitative, constructional analysis of motion verbs in Modern Standard Arabic

Abstract

This article proposes an annotation method of corpus data for the purposes of providing a constructionist account of lexical behavior. The lexical items in question are seven verbs of motion in Modern Standard Arabic that pertain to the events of COME (atā, ǧā’a, hadara, and qadima) and GO (dahaba, madā, and rāha). The tag set selected for the annotation of the COME and GO data frames consists of morphosyntactic tags that characterize verb usage as well as semantic tags that aim to highlight the semantic component of, for instance, adverbial and adpositional phrases that accompany the verb. I will briefly demonstrate the analytical potential of such data frame by discussing the various kinds of statistical tests such data frame is designed to undergo, as a means of better understanding lexical behavior in context, and, eventually, arriving at a better understanding of lexical and constructional choices made by native speakers of Arabic, as demonstrated in corpora.