Annotation guidelines for the GerMAn corpus (German metaphor annotation)

Abstract

We present the guidelines for metaphor annotation in German, which we developed as part of the creation of an annotated metaphor corpus. After a short overview over the definition and compilation of the corpus, we introduce the different steps of metaphor annotation. We start with the basic principles of metaphor identification, which follow the work of Gerard Steen and his group, and the specific challenges imposed for such efforts by German morphology. Then we describe the workflow for metaphor annotation, first the distinction of relevant metaphor types and second the identification of the linguistic context on which the metaphorical interpretation of a linguistic item in the corpus is based, which we call `background'. We conclude with an evaluation of the guidelines and offer two appendices on dead metaphors and the challenging issue of German pronominal adverbials.