Old Norse and Old English Verb Argument Structure Tokens

576 annotated tokens of Dat-Nom and Nom-Dat argument structures for the verbs 'like', 'dislike', and 'suffice' in Old Norse-Icelandic and Old English. The dataset was compiled by author Wannes Elens from multiple historical corpora and dictionaries for a linguistic analysis article. It was last updated on May 10, 2026.

Use Cases

• Train models for syntactic annotation of historical texts based on features like case marking and clause position.
• Analyze the correlation between translation status and argument structure patterns based on the native vs. translated text distinction.
• Study the grammatical properties of nominative and dative arguments based on annotated features like animacy, definiteness, and person.
• Conduct comparative linguistic analysis between Old Norse-Icelandic and Old English based on the annotated cognate verb tokens.

Strengths

• 576 manually annotated tokens provide a substantial basis for quantitative analysis.
• Each token includes detailed annotations for 11 grammatical features for both nominative and dative arguments.
• Tokens are sourced from multiple authoritative historical corpora and a dictionary, including the Dictionary of Old English Corpus.

Limitations

• Row count and column-level documentation are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The dataset's focus is narrow, covering only three specific verb lemmas in two historical languages.
• Freshness should be verified as the last update timestamp is in the future (2026-05-10).

Provenance

Source

Compiled from the Saga Corpus, Íslenskt Textasafn, the Dictionary of Old Norse Prose, and the Dictionary of Old English Corpus.

Collection Method

Tokens were gathered and annotated for grammatical features from the listed historical text sources.

Time Range

Covers the Old Norse-Icelandic and Old English periods.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-10 10:10:09

Geography

Likely focuses on texts from Iceland and Anglo-Saxon England, though specific geography is not stated.