The first round of tagging was completed by developer Simon Wiles. Simon automated the initial steps of name tagging, place tagging, and speech tagging. For name tagging, Simon wrapped in a simple tag any name that appeared in the novel. (He was provided with a list of names beforehand.) The process for tagging places – with the tag – was essentially the same (Simon was also provided with a list of places beforehand). Lastly, Simon automated the basic tagging of speech by encoding what appeared to be instances of speech (strings of text set off by specific punctuation) in the following way:
<said aloud=“” direct=“” who=“” toWhom=“”>[text goes here]</said>.Automated name and place tagging was mostly successful. Only the occasional name or place was missed, and very rarely was something that was not a name or a place tagged as if it was. For example: sometimes capitalized words at the beginning of a sentence – e.g. “Барин” – were falsely tagged as person names.
Automated speech tagging was a little more complicated due to the patterning of punctuation markings. Not infrequently were passages of text marked erroneously. Moreover, closing speech tags (</said>) had a tendency to appear in the wrong places. Complications arose too in instances where there was speech inside of speech. In general, though, any problems with automated tagging of speech could be easily addressed by paying close attention while reading.
After the automated tagging, our next step was to manually populate the blank spaces in <persName>, <placeName>, and <said> tags.
The <persName> tag was filled in by XML identifiers and information about what kind/part of a name was being used: first names, patronymics, last names, diminutives, epithets, and nicknames. XML ID practices differed depending on what parts of a name were available. Characters with first name, last name, and patronymic were assigned three initials, for example, FPK for Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov. Some characters had only first and last names (for example, Liza Khokhlakova). To avoid the risk of having a much simpler “lh” appear in other novels, we added the identifier “bk” to differentiate between The Brothers Karamazov and other works (so, Liza Khokhlakova is “bklh”). Characters that had only first names (servants, for example) were given an XML ID that was simply their first name (e.g. Andrei).
Some characters in the novel, even if they have names (which is not always the case), are primarily referred to by their professions or titles (certain monks, judges, bailiffs, etc.). For these characters, their professions/titles are their XML ID.
Some characters that speak or that act in other ways have no names or titles at all (for example, various “men” and “women.”) Characters such as these receive an XML ID with a number and a reference to the novel’s title: “bkm1” for the first “man” to appear, “bkw1” for the first woman, and so on.
“Men” and “women” that do carry out individual actions are contrasted to groups of people that do not, for example monks that are only talked about/to as a unit and not as individuals. For these instances we created person group tags.
Some names in the text are not tagged as characters at all (that is, they do not get an XML ID). These are minor characters/figures that never speak or are spoken to or that really play no significant role in the text. Any names like this are simply wrapped in a <persName> tag with no further identifiers.
The back matter organizes names into different categories/types of characters. These are: fictional Dostoevsky, fictional non-Dostoevsky, mythical, historical, legendary (names that appear in stories, such as in Ivan’s Grand Inquisitor), imagined, and other (which primarily includes religious figures). There are also two pet names.
Places are tagged more or less in the same way as person names. Each place receives an XML ID, and all places are grouped into different categories in the back matter. These categories are: city, street, building, bridge, river, lake, country, island, station, historical entity (for states/countries no longer in existence), fictional Dostoevsky, fictional non-Dostoevsky, imagined, mythical, cosmic, region, monastery, administrative division, legendary, and other.
Most of speech tagging was straightforward in this novel, though there are a few peculiarities.
To mark speech where the narrator addresses some kind of imagined audience, or where some kind of imagined audience addresses the narrator, or where a character imagines that someone could say such and such thing in such and such situation, we used <seg type=“conditional”>. See, for example, the following “dialogue” between the narrator and an imagined reader:
“Вот если вы не согласитесь с этим последним тезисом и ответите: <seg type="conditional"><q type="spoken" who="#imbkread" toWhom="#bknar">«Не так»</q></seg>; или <seg type="conditional"><q type="spoken" who="#imbkread" toWhom="#bknar">«не всегда так»</q></seg>We also have <seg type=“imaginary”> when a character imagines the speech of another character. For example, here is a passage where Dmitry is imagining a conversation between Alyosha and Katerina Ivanovna:
Потом я сделал вид, что слетал в город, но расписки почтовой ей не представил, сказал, что послал, расписку принесу, и до сих пор не несу, забыл-с. Теперь, как ты думаешь, вот ты сегодня пойдешь и ей скажешь: <seg type="imaginary"><q who="#imafk">«Приказали вам кланяться»</q></seg>, а она тебе: <seg type="imaginary"><q who="#imkiv">«А деньги?»</q></seg>NOTE: The boundary between conditional speech and imaginary speech is difficult to pinpoint. Our tagging here can be open to discussion.
There are many instances of speech where multiple addressees are present. These are tagged in the following way (as an example): <who=“#dfk” toWhom= “afk” “aas”>
Finally, there are a couple instances (in Mokroe, at the trial) where speech not assignable to particular people is more or less just floating around – that is, there is dialogue, but there is no indication who specifically is speaking or being spoken to. In these cases speech is tagged without a who or toWhom.
There are two additional <seg> types that appear occasionally in the story. These are <seg type=“story”> and <seg type=“dream”>. The story tag is for passages of text that are stories told by characters (Ivan’s Grand Inquisitor, Andrei’s story about Jesus). The dream tag is for instances of dreaming (Alyosha’s “vision” of Zosima).