Combining Universal Dependencies and FrameNet to identify constructions in a poetic corpus: syntax and semantics of Latin felix and infelix in Virgilian poetics

The paper is a pilot study which argues for a constructionist and computer-based approach to the syntactic and semantic analysis of a poetic corpus in Latin. We focus on the terms felix and on its opposite infelix and perform manual annotation of their occurrences in Virgil’s poems using Universal Dependencies for the syntactic analysis and FrameNet for the semantic one. Integrating the approaches of Dependency Syntax and Construction Grammar, we analyze the linguistic contexts in which the two terms occur and identify the different “constructions” (pairings of form and function) that they instantiate. Our methodology is language-independent and has the potential to aid scholars in the comparative analysis of poetic texts, allowing for the detection of hidden parallels in the style and poetics of different texts and authors.