Linguistic variations and morphosyntactic annotation of Latin classical texts

This paper assesses the performance of three taggers (MBT, TnT and TreeTagger) when used for the morphosyntactic annotation of classical Latin texts. With this aim in view, we selected the training corpora, -as well as the samples used for tests-, from the texts of the LASLA database. The texts were chosen according to their ability to allow testing of the taggers sensitivity to stylistic, diachronic, generic or discursive variations. On the one hand, this research pinpoints the achievements of each tagger according to the various corpora. On the other hand, the paper proves that these taggers can be used as true heuristic instruments and can help to improve significantly the description of the corpus. MOTS-CLÉS : latin classique, style, genre, discours, morphosyntaxe, étiqueteurs.