Actants

Maximize coreference

Coreference resolution — identifying that different expressions, or absent expressions, refer to the same entity — is essential to producing dense, accurate interaction data. Annotators should resolve coreference actively and systematically, not only where referents are explicitly marked in the text.

Implicit actants. Latin prose, including inquisition records, routinely omits subject and object arguments recoverable from morphology or context (pro-drop, unexpressed objects). These should always be developed: where a verb's subject or object is recoverable, the corresponding entity must be added to the appropriate slot even if no overt nominal or pronominal expression appears in the clause.

Actants without any linguistic signal. A more demanding case arises where no linguistic signal whatsoever marks a participant, yet the participant is semantically required and contextually recoverable. The canonical example is the interlocutor in a reported-speech frame: Que respondit: "…" names the speaker but leaves the addressee entirely implicit. In such cases, however, the addressee is not unknown — it is the interrogating inquisitor (or equivalent interlocutor), whose presence as the recipient of the reply is a structural presupposition of the exchange. The addressee must be developed and added to the relevant actant slot. This principle generalises: wherever the communicative or actional structure of a clause entails a participant recoverable from context, that participant should be populated, so as to maximise the interactionality of the data — the degree to which interactions between specific entities are captured rather than left implicit.

Epistemic level. Resolving implicit or zero-signal coreferences does not amount to an interpretive or inferential claim about historical reality. The actant's involvement is established at the textual level by the logic of the clause and its immediate context. Accordingly, coreference resolution of this kind does not change the epistemic level of the actant involvement.