Representing and Visualizing Calendar Expressions in Texts

Temporal expressions that refer to a part of a calendar area in terms of common calendar divisions are studied. Our claim is that such a “calendar expression" (CE) can be described by a succession of operators operating on a calendar base (CB). These operators are categorized: a pointing operator that transform a CB into a CE; a focalizing/shifting operator that reduces or shifts the CE into another CE, and finally a zoning operator that provides the wanted CE from this last CE. Relying on these operators, a set of annotations is presented which are used to automatically annotate biographic texts. A software application, plugged in the platformNavitext, is described that builds a calendar view of a biographic text.