EWS. Diachronic Syntax Corpus

The time frame of the DiaSynCorp exploratory workshop project is from 1 July 2011 to 31 December 2012. The collaborative activities during this period will involve three two-day workshops in Reykjavík, Oslo and Gothenburg, respectively. It is a major inno vative objective of the Diachronic Syntax Corpora (DiaSynCorp) workshops to explore the possibilities for a common infrastructure project focusing on historical databases of Old Germanic, both in the Nordic countries and beyond. The concrete goal of the D iaSynCorp exploratory workshops is to work out a realistic grant proposal for developing a historical database of all Old Germanic languages. The database will be annotated for linguistic information and provide unique resources for eScience research into older languages. Moreover, an important part of the DiaSynCorp exploratory workshops will involve a comparison of both theoretical and practical/technical aspects of the work carried out in individual projects so as to define the optimal properties of a n annotated database of Old Germanic. The theoretical aspects center around the different predictions and possibilities inherent in each model for a syntactic analysis, with the specific aim to compare the different theoretical models employed in differen t projects, especially Phrase Structure Grammar and Dependency Grammar. The practical/technical aspect relates to the actual implementation of the analytic techniques in the corpora, as well as on the possibilities of computational conversion of analyses conducted in one framework into analyses in the other. At the exploratory workshops, top international researchers will be invited as speakers and consultants on theoretical and practical matters. The pool of prospective workshop participants includes le ading experts in corpus-based diachronic syntax, who are all group leaders in research projects with the aim to develop annotated historical corpora.