FrameNet annotation as a means to identify genre-relevant linguistic structures

Abstract

Research on the teaching of Brazilian Portuguese as L1 has long advocated basing the study of grammar on texts in which a given linguistic structure is highly prevalent. One example of an application of this type is the use of recipes as a means of teaching the imperative mood. However, these kinds of applications are still rare, since manuals approach most grammatical structures using sentences removed from their context of actual usage. One of the factors which contribute to this scenario is the lack of easily accessible systematic descriptions of the grammatical properties of full texts in Brazilian Portuguese. This research, therefore aims to build a freely available computational resource in which texts annotated for the grammatical structures instantiated in them can be searched and extracted for language teaching purposes. Annotation follows the lexicographic and constructional annotation guidelines of FrameNet Brasil. In this paper, we present a pilot study based on the annotation of a travel guide and a TED Talk, showing which kinds of grammatical structures are more relevant to these genres. We also discuss the potential of FrameNet to identify genre-relevant grammatical structures and to show how they pair to the semantic structure of the text.