International Standard for a Linguistic Annotation Framework
Nancy Ide
Dept. of Computer Science
Vassar College
Poughkeepsie,
New York 12604-0520
 USA
ide@cs.vassar.edu
Laurent Romary
Equipe Langue et Dialogue
LORIA/INRIA
Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy
FRANCE
romary@loria.fr
Eric de la Clergerie
INRIA Rocquencourt, BP 105
78153 Le Chesnay cedex
FRANCE
Eric.De_La_Clergerie@
inria.fr
Abstract
This paper describes the outline of a linguistic
annotation framework under development by
ISO TC37 SC WG1-1. This international
standard will provide an architecture for the
creation, annotation, and manipulation of lin-
guistic resources and processing software. The
outline described here results from a meeting
of approximately 20 experts in the field, who
determined the principles and fundamental
structure of the framework. The goal is to
provide maximum flexibility for encoders and
annotators, while at the same time enabling
interchange and re-use of annotated linguistic
resources.
1 Introduction
Language resources are bodies of electronic language
data used to support research and applications in the
area of natural language processing. Typically, such
data are enhanced (annotated) with linguistic informa-
tion such as morpho-syntactic categories, syntactic or
discourse structure, co-reference information, etc.; or
two or more bodies may be aligned for correspondences
(e.g., parallel translations, speech signal and transcrip-
tion).
Over the past 15-20 years, increasingly large bodies
of language resources have been created and annotated
by the language engineering community. Certain fun-
damental representation principles have been widely
adopted, such as the use of stand-off annotation, use of
XML, etc., and several attempts to provide generalized
annotation mechanisms and formats have been devel-
oped (e.g., XCES, annotation graphs). However, it re-
mains the case that annotation formats often vary
considerably from resource to resource, often to satisfy
constraints imposed by particular processing software.
The language processing community has recognized
that commonality and interoperability are increasingly
imperative to enable sharing, merging, and comparison
of language resources.
To provide an infra-structure and framework for
language resource development and use, the Interna-
tional Organization for Standardization (ISO) has
formed a sub-committee (SC4) under Technical Com-
mittee 37 (TC37, Terminology and Other Language
Resources) devoted to Language Resource Manage-
ment. The objective of ISO/TC 37/SC 4 is to prepare
international standards and guidelines for effective lan-
guage resource management in applications in the mul-
tilingual information society. To this end, the committee
is developing principles and methods for creating, cod-
ing, processing and managing language resources, such
as written corpora, lexical corpora, speech corpora, dic-
tionary compiling and classification schemes. The focus
of the work is on data modeling, markup, data exchange
and the evaluation of language resources other than ter-
minologies (which have already been treated in ISO/TC
37). The worldwide use of ISO/TC 37/SC 4 standards
should improve information management within indus-
trial, technical and scientific environments, and increase
efficiency in computer-supported language communica-
tion.
At present, language professionals and standardiza-
tion experts are not sufficiently aware of the standardi-
zation efforts being undertaken by ISO/TC 37/SC 4.
Promoting awareness of future activities and rising
problems, therefore, is crucial for the success of the
committee, and will be required to ensure widespread
adoption of the standards it develops. An even more
critical factor for the success of the committee's work is
to involve, from the outset, as many and as broad a
range of potential users of the standards as possible.
Within ISO/TC 37/SC 4, a working group (WG1-1)
has been established to develop a Linguistic Annotation
Framework (LAF) that can serve as a basis for harmo-
nizing existing language resources as well as developing
new ones. In order to ensure that the framework is de-
veloped based on the input and consensus of the re-
search community, a group of experts
1
 was convened on
November 21-22, 2002, at Pont-à-Mousson, France, to
lay out the overall structure of the framework. .In this
paper, we outline the conclusions from this meeting, and
solicit the input of other members of the community to
inform its further development.
2 Background and rationale
The standardization of principles and methods for the
collection, processing and presentation of language re-
sources requires a distinct type of activity. Basic stan-
dards must be produced with wide-ranging applications
in view. In the area of language resources, these stan-
dards should provide various technical committees of
ISO, IEC and other standardizing bodies with the
groundwork for building more precise standards for
language resource management.
The need for harmonization of representation for-
mats for different kinds of linguistic information is criti-
cal, as resources and information are more and more
frequently merged, compared, or otherwise utilized in
common systems. This is perhaps most obvious for
processing multi-modal information, which must sup-
port the fusion of multimodal inputs and represent the
combined and integrated contributions of different types
of input (e.g., a spoken utterance combined with gesture
and facial expression), and enable multimodal output
(see, for example, Bunt and Romary, 2002). However,
language processing applications of any kind require the
integration of varieties of linguistic information, which,
in today’s environment, come from potentially diverse
sources. We can therefore expect use and integration of,
for example, syntactic, morphological, discourse, etc.
information for multiple languages, as well as informa-
tion structures like domain models and ontologies.
We are aware that standardization is a difficult busi-
ness, and that many members of the targeted communi-
ties are skeptical about imposing any sort of standards at
all. There are two major arguments against the idea of
standardization for language resources. First, the diver-
sity of theoretical approaches to, in particular, the an-
                                                            
1
 Participants: Nuria Bel (Universitat de Barcelona), David
Durand (Brown University), Henry Thompson (University of
Edinburgh), Koiti Hasida (AIST Tokyo), Eric De La Clergerie
(INRIA), Lionel Clement (INRIA), Laurent Romary (LORIA),
Nancy Ide (Vassar College), Kiyong Lee (Korea University),
Keith Suderman (Vassar College), Aswani Kumar (LORIA),
Chris Laprun (NIST), Thierry Declerck (DFKI), Jean Carletta
(University of Edinburgh), Michael Strube (European Media
Laboratory), Hamish Cunningham (University of Sheffield),
Tomaz Erjavec (Institute Jozef Stefan), Hennie Brugman
(Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik), Fabio Vitali (Uni-
versite di Bologna), Key-Sun Choi (Korterm), Jean-Michel
Borde (Digital Visual), Eric Kow (LORIA).
notation of various linguistic phenomena suggests that
standardization is at least impractical, if not impossible.
Second, it is feared that vast amounts of existing data
and processing software, which may have taken years of
effort and considerable funding to develop, will be ren-
dered obsolete by the acceptance of new standards by
the community. Recognizing the validity of both of
these concerns, WG1-1 does not seek to establish a sin-
gle, definitive annotation scheme or format. Rather, the
goal is to provide a framework for linguistic annotation
of language resources that can serve as a reference or
pivot for different annotation schemes, and which will
enable their merging and/or comparison. To this end,
the work of WG1-1 includes the following:
o analysis of the full range of annotation types and
existing schemes, to identify the fundamental
structural principles and content categories;
o instantiation of an abstract format capable of cap-
turing the structure and content of  linguistic anno-
tations, based on the analysis in (1);
o establishment of a mechanism for formal definition
of a set of reference content categories which can
be used “off the shelf” or serve as a point of depar-
ture for precise definition of new or modified cate-
gories.
o provision of both a set of guidelines and principles
for developing new annotation schemes and con-
crete mechanisms for their implementation, for
those who wish to use them.
By situating all of the standards development
squarely in the framework of XML and related stan-
dards such as RDF, DAML+OIL, etc., we hope to en-
sure not only that the standards developed by the
committee provide for compatibility with established
and widely accepted web-based technologies, but also
that transduction from legacy formats into XML formats
conformant to the new standards is feasible.
3 General requirements for a linguistic
annotation framework
The following general requirements for a linguistic an-
notation framework were identified by the group of ex-
perts at Pont-à-Mousson:
Expressive adequacy
The framework must provide means to represent all
varieties of linguistic information (and possibly also
other types of information). This includes representing
the full range of information from the very general to
information at the finest level of granularity.
Media independence
The framework must handle all potential media types,
including text, audio, video, image, etc. and should, in
principle, provide common mechanisms for handling all
of them. The framework will rely on existing or devel-
oping standards for representing multi-media.
Semantic adequacy
o Representation structures must have a formal se-
mantics, including definitions of logical operations
o There must exist a centralized way of sharing de-
scriptors and information categories
Incrementality
o The framework must provide support for various
stages of input interpretation and output generation.
o The framework must provide for the representation
of partial/under-specified results and ambiguities,
alternatives, etc. and their merging and comparison.
Uniformity
Representations must utilize same “building blocks” and
the same methods for combining them.
Openness
The framework must not dictate representations de-
pendent on a single linguistic theory.
Extensibility
The framework must provide ways to declare and inter-
change extensions to the centralized data category reg-
istry.
Human readability
Representations must be human readable, at least for
creation and editing.
Processability (explicitness)
Information in an annotation scheme must be ex-
plicit—that is, the burden of interpretation should not be
left to the processing software.
Consistency
Different mechanisms should not be used to indicate the
same type of information.
To fulfill these requirements, it is necessary to iden-
tify a consistent underlying data model for data and its
annotations. A data model is a formalized description of
the data objects (in terms of composition, attributes,
class membership, applicable procedures, etc.) and rela-
tions among them, independent of their instantiation in
any particular form. A data model capable of capturing
the structure and relations in diverse types of data and
annotations is a pre-requisite for developing a common
corpus-handling environment: it impacts the design of
annotation schema, encoding formats and data archi-
tectures, and tool architectures.
As a starting assumption, we can conceive of an an-
notation as a one- or two-way link between an annota-
tion object and a point (or a list/set of points) or span (or
a list/set of spans) within a base data set. Links may or
may not have a semantics--i.e., a type--associated with
them. Points and spans in the base data may themselves
be objects, or sets or lists of objects. We make several
observations concerning this assumption:
o the model assumes a fundamental linearity of ob-
jects in the base,
2
  e.g., as a time line (speech); a se-
quence of characters, words, sentences, etc.; or
pixel data representing images;
o the granularity of the data representation and en-
coding is critical: it must be possible to uniquely
point to the smallest possible component (e.g.,
character, phonetic component, pitch signal, mor-
pheme, word, etc.);
o an annotation scheme must be mappable to the
structures defined for annotation objects in the
model;
o an encoding scheme must be able to capture the
object structure and relations expressed in the
model, including class membership and inheritance,
therefore requiring a sophisticated means to specify
linkage within and between documents;
o it is necessary to consider the logistics of identify-
ing spans by enclosing them in start and end tags
(thus enabling hierarchical grouping of objects in
the data itself), vs. explicit addressing of start and
end points, which is required for read-only data;
o it must be possible to represent objects and rela-
tions in some (fairly straightforward) form that pre-
vents information loss;
o ideally, it should be possible to represent the ob-
jects and relations in a variety of formats suitable to
different tools and applications.
ISO TC37/SC 4’s goal is to develop a framework for
the design and implementation of linguistic resource
formats and processes in order to facilitate the exchange
of information between language processing modules. A
well-defined representational framework for linguistic
information will also provide for the specification and
comparison of existing application-specific representa-
tions and the definition of new ones, while ensuring a
level of interoperability between them. The framework
should allow for variation in annotation schemes while
                                                            
2
 Note that this observation applies to the fundamental struc-
ture of stored data. Because the targets of a relation may be
either individual objects, or sets or lists of objects, information
with more than one dimension is accommodated.
at the same time enabling comparison and evaluation,
merging of different annotations, and development of
common tools for creating and using annotated data. For
this purpose we envisage a common “pivot” format
based on a data model capable of capturing all types of
information in linguistic annotations, into and out of
which site-specific representation formats can be trans-
duced. This strategy is similar to that adopted in the
design of languages intended to be reusable across plat-
forms, such as Java. The pivot format must support the
communication among all modules in the system, and
be adequate for representing not only the end result of
interpretation, but also intermediate results.
4 Terms and definitions
The following terms and definitions are used in the dis-
cussion that follows:
Annotation: The process of adding linguistic informa-
tion to language data (“annotation of a corpus”) or the
linguistic information itself (“an annotation”), inde-
pendent of its representation. For example, one may
annotate a document for syntax using a LISP-like repre-
sentation, an XML representation, etc.
Representation: The format in which the annotation is
rendered, e.g. XML, LISP, etc. independent of its con-
tent. For example, a phrase structure syntactic annota-
tion and a dependency-based annotation may both be
represented using XML, even though the annotation
information itself is very different.
Types of Annotation: We distinguish two fundamental
types of annotation activity:
1. segmentation : delimits linguistic elements that
appear in the primary data. Including
o continuous segments (appear contiguously in
the primary data)
o super- and sub-segments, where groups of
segments will comprise the parts of a larger
segment (e.g., a contiguous word segments
typically comprise a sentence segment)
o discontinuous segments (linking continuous
segments)
o landmarks (e.g time stamps) that note a point in
the primary data
In current practice, segmental information may
or may not appear in the document containing the
primary data itself. Documents considered to be
read-only, for example, might be segmented by
specifying byte offsets into the primary document
where a given segment begins and ends.
2. linguistic annotation: provides linguistic informa-
tion about the segments in the primary data, e.g., a
morpho-syntactic annotation in which a part of
speech and lemma are associated with each seg-
ment in the data. Note that the identification of a
segment as a word, sentence, noun phrase, etc. also
constitutes linguistic annotation. In current practice,
when it is possible to do so, segmentation and
identification of the linguistic role or properties of
that segment are often combined (e.g., syntactic
bracketing, or delimiting each word in the docu-
ment with an XML tag that identifies the segment
as a word, sentence, etc.).
Stand-off annotation: Annotations layered over a
given primary document and instantiated in a document
separate from that containing the primary data. Stand-
off annotations refer to specific locations in the primary
data, by addressing byte offsets, elements, etc. to which
the annotation applies. Multiple stand-off annotation
documents for a given type of annotation can refer to
the same primary document (e.g., two different part of
speech annotations for a given text). There is no re-
quirement that a single XML-compliant document may
be created by merging stand-off annotation documents
with the primary data; that is, two annotation documents
may specify trees over the primary data that contain
overlapping hierarchies.
5 Design principles
The following general principles will guide the LAF
development:
o The data model and document form are distinct but
mappable to one another
o The data model is parsimonious, general, and for-
mally precise
o The data model is built around a clear separation of
structure and content
o There is an inventory of logical operations sup-
ported by the data model, which define its abstract
semantics
o The document form is largely under user control
o The mapping between the flexible document form
and data model is via a rigid dump-format
o The mapping from document form to the dump
format is documented in an XML Schema (or the
functional equivalent thereof) associated with the
document
o Mapping is operationalized either via schema-based
data-binding process or via schema-derived
stylesheet mapping between the user document and
the dump-format document.
o It must be possible to isolate specific layers of an-
notation from other annotation layers or the primary
(base) data; i.e., it must be possible to create a for-
mat using stand-off annotation
o The dump format must be designed to enable
stream marshalling and unmarshalling
The overall architecture of LAF as dictated by these
principles is given in Figure 1. The left side of the dia-
gram represents the user-defined document form, and is
labeled “human” to indicate that creation and editing, of
the resource is accomplished via human interaction with
this format. This format should, to the extent possible,
be human readable. We will support XML for these
formats (e.g., by providing style sheets, examples, etc.)
but not disallow other formats. The right side represents
the dump format, which is machine processable, and
may not be human readable as it is intended for use only
in processing. This format will be instantiated in XML.
Figure 1. Overall LAF architecture
6 Practice
The following set of practices will guide the implementa-
tion of the LAF:
o The data model is essentially a feature structure
graph with a moderate admixture of algebra (e.g.
disjunction, sets), grounded in n-dimensional regions
of primary data and literals.
o The dump format is isomorphic to the data model.
o Semantic coherence is provided by a registry of fea-
tures in an XML-compatible format (e.g., RDF),
which can be used directly in the user-defined for-
mats and is always used with the dump format.
o Resources will be available to support the design and
specification of document forms, for example:
-XML Schemas in several normal forms based on
type definitions and abstract elements that can be
exploited via type derivation and/or substitution
group;
-XPointer design-patterns with standoff seman-
tics;
-Schema annotations specifying mapping between
document form and data model;
-Meta-stylesheet for mapping from annotated
XML Schema to mapping stylesheets;
-Data-binding stylesheets with language-specific
bindings (e.g. Java).
o Users may define their own data categories or estab-
lish variants of categories in the registry. In such
cases, the newly defined data categories will be for-
malized using the same format as definitions avail-
able in the registry, and will be associated with the
dump format.
o The responsibility of converting to the dump format
is on the producer of the resource.
o The producer is responsible for documenting the
mapping from the user format to the data model.
Dump format
(some instantiation of
data model)
MAPPING SPEC
(e.g. W3C
XML schema)
User annotation
form
Meta-stylesheet
stylesheet
Intended for archive
Accompanied by
mapping to data
model
Pivot format
HUMAN MACHINE
o The ISO working group will provide test suites and
examples following these guidelines:
-The example format should illustrate use of data
model/mapping
-The examples will show both the left (human-
readable) and right (machine processable) side
formats
-Examples will be provided that use existing
schemes
7 Discussion
The framework outlined in the previous section provides
for the use of any annotation format consistent with the
feature structure-based data model that will be used to
define the pivot format. This suggests a future scenario in
which annotators may create and edit annotations in a
proprietary format, transduce the annotations using avail-
able tools to the pivot format for interchange and/or proc-
essing, and if desired, transduce the pivot form of the
annotations (and/or additional annotation introduced by
processing) back into the proprietary format. We antici-
pate the future development of annotation tools that pro-
vide a user-oriented interface for specifying annotation
information, and which then generate annotations in the
pivot format directly. Thus the pivot format is intended to
function in the same way as, for example, Java byte code
functions for programmers, as a universal “machine lan-
guage” that is interpreted by processing software into an
internal representation suited to its particular require-
ments. As with Java byte code, users need never see or
manipulate the pivot format; it is solely for machine con-
sumption.
Information units or data categories provide the se-
mantics of an annotation. Data categories are the most
theory and application-specific part of an annotation
scheme. Therefore, LAF includes a Data Category Regis-
try to provide a means to formally define data categories
for reference and use in annotation. To make them maxi-
mally interoperable and consistent with existing stan-
dards, RDF schemas can be used to formalize the
properties and relations associated with each data cate-
gory. The RDF schema ensures that each instantiation of
the described objects is recognized as a sub-class of more
general classes and inherits the appropriate properties.
Annotations will reference the data categories via a URL
identifying their instantiations in the Data Category Reg-
istry itself. The class and sub-class mechanisms provided
in RDFS and its extensions in OWL will also enable
creation of an ontology of annotation classes and types.
A formally defined set of categories will have several
functions: (1) it will provide a precise semantics for an-
notation categories that can be either used “off the shelf”
by annotators or modified to serve specific needs; (2) it
will provide a set of reference categories onto which
scheme-specific names can be mapped; and (3) it will
provide a point of departure for definition of variant or
more precise categories. Thus the overall goal of the Data
Category Registry is not to impose a specific set of cate-
gories, but rather to ensure that the semantics of data
categories included in annotations (whether they exist in
the Registry or not) are well-defined and understood.
The data model that will define the pivot format must
be capable of representing all of the information con-
tained in diverse annotation types. The model we assume
is a feature structure graph for annotation information,
capable of referencing n-dimensional regions of primary
data as well as other annotations. The choice of this
model is indicated by its almost universal use in defining
general-purpose annotation formats, including the Ge-
neric Modeling Tool (GMT) (Ide & Romary, 2001, 2002)
and Annotation Graphs (Bird & Liberman, 2001). The
XML-based GMT could serve as a starting point for de-
fining the pivot format; its applicability to diverse anno-
tation types, including terminology, dictionaries and other
lexical data (Ide, et al., 2000), morphological annotation
(Ide & Romary, 2001a; 2003) and syntactic annotation
(Ide & Romary, 2001b) demonstrates its generality. As
specified by the LAF architecture, the GMT implements a
feature structure graph, and exploits the hierarchical
structure of XML elements and XML’s powerful inter-
and intra-document pointing and linkage mechanisms for
referencing both “raw” and XML-tagged primary data
and its annotations.
The provision of development resources, including
schemas, design patterns, and stylesheets, will enable
annotators and software developers to immediately adapt
to LAF. Example mappings, e.g., for XCES-encoded an-
notations, will also be provided.
8 Conclusion
In this paper we describe the Linguistic Annotation
Framework under development by ISO TC37/SC 4 WG1-
1, as defined by a group of experts convened at a work-
shop in Pont-à-Mousson, France, in late 2002. Its design
is intended to allow for, on the one hand, maximum flexi-
bility for annotators, and. on the other, processing effi-
ciency and reusability. This is accomplished by
separating user annotation formats from the ex-
change/processing format. This separation also ensures
that pre-existing annotations are compatible with LAF.
ISO TC37/SC4 is just beginning its work, and will use
the general framework discussed in the preceding sections
as its starting point. However, the work of the committee
will not be successful unless it is accepted by the lan-
guage processing community. To ensure widespread ac-
ceptance, it is critical to involve as many representatives
of the community in the development of the standards as
possible, in order to ensure that all needs are addressed.
This paper serves as a call for participation to the lan-
guage processing community; those interested should
contact the TC 37/SC 4 chairman (Laurent Romary:
romary@loria.fr). For general information, consult the
ISO TC37/SC4 website (http://www.tc37sc4.org).

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