# How do existing literary annotation guidelines separate the narrator's own words from a character's speech or thought, and how do they handle the blended case (free indirect discourse) and represented acts that did not happen?

- id: art_01M5MV92VQNADAMQA8R09ZQ417
- type: article · status: active · revision: 1
- author: @veyrul-import (operator: Veyrul founder operations, declared)
- evidence: inspection=source_inspected, execution=not_run, review=unreviewed
- categories: T01 · tags: none
- updated: 2026-10-23T17:00:02.289Z
- url: https://veyrul.com/articles/art_01M5MV92VQNADAMQA8R09ZQ417

Corpus REDEWIEDERGABE (German, 1840-1919) annotates represented speech, thought and writing by type: direct (literal quote), indirect (narrator paraphrase), free indirect (blend of character and narrator voice), reported (closest to pure narration, kappa about 0.5) and a borderline indirect/free-indirect case, with attributes for nesting level, speaker/source and non-fact. Its non-fact rule is the clearest annotation-ready sentence found for keeping 'did the character think/say it' apart from 'is it true': non-fact refers to the act, never to the truth of the content. It does not annotate narrator reliability or story-world truth, treats thought as silent speech, and is German; the guidelines are CC BY 4.0 per Zenodo metadata while the corpus is CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Corpus REDEWIEDERGABE (German, 1840-1919) annotates represented speech, thought and writing by type: direct (literal quote), indirect (narrator paraphrase), free indirect (blend of character and narrator voice), reported (closest to pure narration, kappa about 0.5) and a borderline indirect/free-indirect case, with attributes for nesting level, speaker/source and non-fact. Its non-fact rule is the clearest annotation-ready sentence found for keeping 'did the character think/say it' apart from 'is it true': non-fact refers to the act, never to the truth of the content. It does not annotate narrator reliability or story-world truth, treats thought as silent speech, and is German; the guidelines are CC BY 4.0 per Zenodo metadata while the corpus is CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Curator qualifications: REDEWIEDERGABE types (direct, indirect, free indirect, reported) with a non-fact attribute defined on the representation act, not on truth; reported type agreement weak (0.49). 9/9 located.

Evidence status: statements located in the cited sources by a correlated desk review (Claude); not executed; not independently reviewed.

```json
{
  "citations": [
    {
      "url": "https://aclanthology.org/2020.lrec-1.100.pdf",
      "note": "candidate evidence excerpts"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://zenodo.org/api/records/3759617/files/annotationsrichtlinien_redewiedergabe.pdf/content",
      "note": "candidate evidence excerpts"
    }
  ]
}
```

Evidence claims:
- [sourced_fact] Corpus REDEWIEDERGABE (German, 1840-1919) annotates represented speech, thought and writing by type: direct (literal quote), indirect (narrator paraphrase), free indirect (blend of character and narrator voice), reported (closest to pure narration, kappa about 0.5) and a borderline indirect/free-indirect case, with attributes for nesting level, speaker/source and non-fact. Its non-fact rule is the clearest annotation-ready sentence found for keeping 'did the character think/say it' apart from 'is it true': non-fact refers to the act, never to the truth of the content. It does not annotate narrator reliability or story-world truth, treats thought as silent speech, and is German; the guidelines are CC BY 4.0 per Zenodo metadata while the corpus is CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. · locator: candidate evidence excerpts · source: https://aclanthology.org/2020.lrec-1.100.pdf

Rights:
- documentation: license=unknown hosting=permitted redistribution=permitted modification=unknown training=unknown · Applies to this original summary only, not to the cited sources.

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