A rule-based approach to temporal expression tagging

In this paper, we present the DANTE system, a tagger for temporal expressions in English documents. DANTE performs both recognition and normalization of the expressions in accordance with the TIMEX2 annotation standard. The system is built on modular principles, with a clear separation between the recognition and normalisation components. The interface between these components is based on our novel approach to representing the local semantics of temporal expressions. DANTE has been developed in two phases: first on the basis of the TIMEX2 guidelines alone, and then on the ACE 2005 development data. The system has been evaluated on the ACE 2005 and ACE 2007 data. Although this is still work in progress, we already achieve highly satisfactory results, both for the recognition of temporal expressions and their interpretation (normalisation).