From variation to harmonization: the UD Turkic Group initiative

Soudabeh Eslami, Furkan Akkurt, Bermet Chontaeva, Cagri Coltekin, Nikolett Mus, Jonathan Washington

Keywords: Universal Dependencies, Turkic languages

Working Group: WG1: Corpus annotation, WG4: Quantifying and promoting diversity

WG1 Tasks: Task 1.1: Linguistic typology and multilingual corpus annotation, Task 1.3: Extensions and updates to morphosyntactic annotation guidelines

Abstract:

This abstract summarizes the activities of the
UD Turkic Group, established in September 2023
within the framework of the UniDive COST Action
(CA21167) and operating primarily within WG1.
The group aims to harmonize annotations across
Universal Dependencies (UD) treebanks for Tur-
kic languages and to develop guidelines for future
initiatives.
As of UD v2.17, 26 treebanks covering 12 Tur-
kic languages or varieties exhibit considerable
cross-treebank variation. These discrepancies arise
from both unresolved issues in linguistic analysis
and independent design choices across annotation
efforts. Although Turkic languages share typologi-
cally and genetically grounded features, these are
not always analysed uniformly, due to differing
linguistic traditions and gaps in language-specific
descriptions.
To address this, the group conducts collaborative
cross-linguistic analysis with the goal of reconcil-
ing divergent practices and formulating recommen-
dations for consistent and interoperable annotation
across Turkic UD treebanks.

WG4 Tasks: Task 4.1: Promoting low-resourced/endangered languages

Tracks For Type Of Contribution: Work in progress

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Submission Number: 64