Her mission is aimed to compare two approaches to discourse phenomena that are applied in the Prague discourse Treebank (PDiT) in Prague and in the GECCo project (German-English contrasts in cohesion – Towards an empirically-based comparison) in Saarland University.
Initial pilot observations showed that in several respects, these two conceptions of textual phenomena analysis are very close, and their further comparison can bring theoretically interesting results. Together with her German colleagues, Dr Nedoluzhko will explore the interoperability of such annotation schemes, identify their differences and commonalities, and think of ways of applying both without losing important categories and aspects.
The first step of cooperation during her stay will consist of pilot parallel annotation according to the guidelines in both conceptions (PDiT and GECCo). Then, the set of commonalities and differences revealed by the annotation will be investigated. For example, in GECCo, textual phenomena are annotated primarily from the point of view of textual cohesion, i.e. all explicit markers of cohesion are annotated as such and are further classified. On the other hand, Prague discourse annotation is basing on both cohesive and reference properties. Analyzing annotated texts will show e.g. which discourse phenomena are better resolved by which approach. Another outcome of this cooperation will include resources, e.g. lexicons of discourse--relational devices. The comparison of the schemes, as well as their test application will show the gaps in both lexicons of discourse-relational devices.