It-TimeML and the Ita-TimeBank: Language Specific Adaptations for Temporal Annotation

This chapter presents the language specific adaptation of the TimeML annotation scheme to Italian and the creation of the Ita-TimeBank, a language resource composed of two corpora manually annotated with temporal and event information. Particular attention is given to the methodology followed in the development of the corpora: the annotation guidelines document the actual choices done during the annotation and address language specific issues while maintaining adherence to the specifications. The annotation guidelines are supplied with decision tree like instructions and tests grounded in linguistic analysis but theory independent. The results obtained show the reliability of the adaptation of the annotation specifications to Italian and of the methodology used for the creation of the resources.