Emphasisfrom

Emphasisfrom is a proposed annotation concept used in linguistic transcription and digital humanities to indicate that the emphasis on a word or phrase derives from another part of the discourse rather than from the word itself. It is intended to help preserve or analyze emphasis patterns across translations, transcripts, and reader-facing editions.

Definition and scope: Emphasisfrom labels are attached to tokens to signal the source of emphasis, such as a preceding clause, quoted speech, contrastive focus, or authorial intention. The concept is applicable to scholarly corpora, subtitles, and interactive editions where emphasis cues need to be traced across languages or modalities.

Notation and formats: In XML-based annotation such as TEI, emphasisfrom can be expressed as a token attribute or a separate annotation element, for example: <w lemma="focus" emphasisfrom="previous_clause"/> or <emphasisFrom source="previous_clause">focus</emphasisFrom>. In JSON, a token might carry emphasisFrom: 'previous_clause' along with other metadata.

Examples: 1) He warned that the plan would fail; emphasisfrom="previous_clause" marks that the emphasis on 'fail' reflects the impact of the preceding warning. 2) The translation preserves emphasis via emphasisFrom="quoted_speech" to indicate that emphasis mirrors the source quotation.

History and current status: Emphasisfrom is a term used in scholarly discussions about annotation schemes and is not a widely standardized feature in mainstream natural language processing as of the latest consensus. It remains a niche concept for data annotation and linguistic research.

See also: emphasis, discourse markers, annotation, TEI, translation studies.