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Capturing syntactico-semantic regularities among terms: An application of the FrameNet methodology to terminology

Terminological databases do not always provide detailed information on the linguistic behaviour of terms, although this is important for potential users such as translators or students. In this paper we describe a project that aims to fill this gap by proposing a method for annotating terms in sentences based on that developed within the FrameNet project (Ruppenhofer et al. 2010) and by implementing it in an online resource called DiCoInfo. We focus on the methodology we devised, and show with some preliminary results how similar actantial (i.e. argumental) structures can provide evidence for defining lexical relations in specific languages and capturing cross-linguistic equivalents. The paper argues that the syntactico-semantic annotation of the contexts in which the terms occur allows lexicographers to validate their intuitions concerning the linguistic behaviour of terms as well as interlinguistic relations between them. The syntactico-semantic annotation of contexts could, therefore, be considered a good starting point in terminology work that aims to describe the linguistic functioning of terms and offer a sounder basis to define interlinguistic relationships between terms that belong to different languages.