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# Feature structures for character social variable annotation and an application to Alsatian theater

Pablo Ruiz Fabo, Helena Bermúdez Sabel

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## To cite this version:

Pablo Ruiz Fabo, Helena Bermúdez Sabel. Feature structures for character social variable annotation and an application to Alsatian theater. Text Encoding Initiative 2022 Conference - TEI 2022, Sep 2022, Newcastle, United Kingdom., 2022, 10.5281/zenodo.7110069. [https://hal.science/hal-03762679v1](https://hal.science/hal-03762679v1)

HAL Id: hal-03762679

Submitted on 4 Mar 2025

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Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
# Virtual Poster: Feature structures for character social variable annotation and an application to Alsatian theater

P. Ruiz Fabo1, H. Bermúdez Sabel2

1: Université de Strasbourg, France; 2: Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland

**Keywords:** feature structures, character analysis, theater, personography, Alsatian

## Feature structures for character social variable annotation and an application to Alsatian theater

Pablo Ruiz Fabo (Université de Strasbourg), Helena Bermúdez Sabel (Université de Neuchâtel)
Several works address the computational treatment of dramatic characters. Zöllner-Weber (2008, 2011) presents a character analysis ontology. Galleron (2017) developed a *characteriseme* (characterization unit) taxonomy based on character lists in French theater between 1630 and 1810, formalized as a TEI feature structure (FS) library (see Romary, 2015). Following Phelan (1989), the taxonomy includes *mimetic* features, which give characters traits assimilating them to humans, and synthetic ones, describing their role in the plot.

We believe that characteriseme analysis using a common annotation schema can help comparative drama analysis. We successfully adapted Galleron's FS approach to model characters in a different language (Alsatian) and period (1870-1940). This can help compare the Alsatian tradition to the hegemonic literatures surrounding it (German and French), one of the goals towards which our ongoing MeThAL project contributes (Ruiz et al., 2022).¹

The poster's contributions:

* A character feature (characteriseme) taxonomy using feature structures, inspired by Galleron (2017) but providing an improved, more modular implementation, and enabling the description of more recent drama

* A TEI personography where each of our corpus' 2386 characters is described according to the feature structure²

* First characterization analyses in the corpus based on it

Intermediate levels were added in our FS to better group mimetic features into basic traits (age, gender, origin, language), socioeconomic traits (profession, class) and relation-position traits (where a character stands in personal or professional relations, e.g. *spouse* or *manager*). Controlled vocabularies were added, including a list of ca. 350 professions and a taxonomy of socioprofessional groups. Personography compliance was ensured with a schema automatically derived from the FS System Declaration (Bermúdez, 2019). The annotations have yielded insight into how female characters are characterized differently by female authors (increased reference to character's profession) vs. male ones. An interface to navigate the corpus based on the annotations was created.³

## References

* Bermúdez Sabel, H. (2019). Encoding of Variant Taxonomies in TEI. *Journal of the Text Encoding Initiative, Issue 11, Article Issue 11*. https://doi.org/10.4000/jtei.2676
<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 1:** Two examples of characters described through FS. Besides the FS, a `<note type="roleDesc">` element provides the original information in the *dramatis personæ* based on which the feature values were established.</figcaption></figure>

**Notes:**

1. https://methal.pages.unistra.fr/en

2. See https://git.unistra.fr/methal/methal-sources/-/tree/master/personography for the FS library, personography and schema

3. https://methal.eu/ui/