Organizing linguistic data: thematic introducers as an example

Abstract

In this paper I propose to model specific French linguistic markers, thematic introducers (e.g. au sujet de, à propos de, en ce qui concerne, concernant, etc.) in the ContextO platform developed by the LaLic team in the Université de Paris IV. I use the software to locate thematic structures in texts. The software uses a linguistic database in order to trace the relevant linguistic information that the user is looking at. The ultimate aim is to create a database that matches the linguistic representation in order to create a linguist-friendly tool. I review several studies that propose a classification containing thematic introducers and then explain how I have proceeded to propose a customized distribution of the thematic introducers to meet the constraints of the system.