Selection of German lemmas

Criteria

The following criteria were used to select the German verbs to ensure that they prove useful for the project and are comparable with the Italian counterparts:

• The verbs are translation equivalents of non-peripheral readings of the Italian verbs.
• The verbs display a diversity of subcategorization frames (SC-frames).
• The verbs display a diversity of collocations and of sortal types of complement heads.
• The verbs are frequent enough to ensure a good representation within the corpora.

As a first step in selecting the German verbs for the ELSNET-project, a list of translations for the Italian verbs was made. These verbs were then checked superficially for diversity of their subcategorization frames, collocations and sortal complement types as well as for their frequency. A second list of verbs was made containing those verbs that seemed interesting and frequent enough. The goal was to keep the verbs semantically and syntactically as divers as possible, i.e., to keep a one to one relation between Italian and German whenever possible.

In a second step the candidate verbs were checked in detail to see which of them matched the criteria best and promised to give the most interesting and telling results in a syntactic and semantic annotation.

Problems arose with the attempt to find German equivalents for the Italian reflexive verbs (arrestarsi, chiamarsi, mantenersi) the German counterparts of which being of low to very low frequency (if at all in the corpora). Besides, for some Italian verbs the most typical German verbal equivalent seemed not to be very useful, mostly because of the low frequency.
It was decided to leave the equivalents of Italian reflexive verbs aside. Instead, the reflexive realization of some of the other words was considered. However, the reflexive subcategorization frames were not listed under a separate entry but were added to the subcategorization frames of the non-reflexive verb.

Selected verbs

Italian German

abbandonare aufgeben SC:4 ; verlassen SC:2

arrestare festnehmen SC:1; aufhalten SC:1+3refl

aprire öffnen SC:2+3refl; eröffnen SC:3+1refl

prevedere vorsehen/planen SC:2+1(2)refl/SC:2; vermuten/ahnen SC:1/SC:2

tagliare reduzieren SC:2+1refl; unterbrechen SC:3(4)

comprendere verstehen SC:3(4)+2(3)refl

chiamare rufen SC:4(6); aufrufen SC:(3)

chiedere bitten SC:3; fragen (nach) SC:2+2(nach)+1refl

perseguire fortsetzen SC:2+2refl; verfolgen SC:2

coprire umfassen SC:2+2refl; decken; schützen SC:4(6)+2(4)refl

entrare passen (in) SC:3+1(in)+1(zu); eintreten SC:3(4); sich beteiligen SC:2+2refl

vedere sehen SC:4(5)+1refl; erkennen SC:3(5)+1refl

mantenere halten SC:7(8)

mantenersi andauern SC:2; sich halten (an) SC:2(3)

percepire erhalten SC:1

esercitare tätig sein/betreiben SC:2; üben/sich üben SC2+2refl

presentare zeigen SC:5+2refl; präsentieren SC:3(4)+2refl

portare bringen SC:4(5); tragen SC:4+1refl

provare üben/proben SC:3; versuchen SC:1+2(4)refl; spüren/empfinden SC:3/SC:2(3)

realizzare realisieren SC:1; begreifen SC:3

arrivare erreichen SC:1; ankommen SC:6(8)