[ Skip to the content ]

Institute of Formal and Applied Linguistics Wiki


[ Back to the navigation ]

Table of Contents

DZ Interset Features and Values

pos

Part of speech. Pronouns, determiners, predeterminers and articles are roofed by nouns and adjectives, and distinguished by values of other features. The num value is intended for cardinal numbers (numtype = card). Other types of numerals are roofed by syntactically defined parts of speech (adjectives or adverbs) and distinguished by values of numtype.

Value Description
noun noun
adj adjective
num numeral (cardinal number)
verb verb
adv adverb
adp adposition (preposition, postposition or circumposition)
conj conjunction
part particle
int interjection
punc punctuation
sym symbol

The difference between punctuation and symbols is that punctuation delimits parts of the sentence while symbols can be substituted for a word. For example, $ is not a punctuation, it is another form of writing the noun dollar. See also the definition of SYM for the Universal Dependencies.

nountype

Value Description
com common noun (“man”, “dog”, “house”, “idea”)
prop proper noun (“George”, “Bush”, “Paris”)
class classifier (measure word) between number and counted noun, e.g. Chinese “個 gè”

nametype

Semantic classification of named entities and terms.

Value Description
geo geographical name (“Praha”, “Ústí nad Labem”)
prs personal name (no first/last distinction available)
giv given (first) name (“Petr”, “John”)
sur surname (last name) (“Dvořák”, “Zelený”, “Agassi”, “Bush”)
nat nationality (“Čech”, “Kolumbijec”) or a name of an inhabitant of certain location (“Pražan”)
com company (“Tatra” (the company))
pro product (“Tatra” (the car))
oth other named entity, e.g.: mines, stadiums, guerilla bases etc. Also used for functional words in names.
col color indication
sci term from natural sciences
che chemical term
med medical term
tec general technical term
cel term from computers and electronics
gov term from politics, government, military
jus term from justice
fin financial or economic term
env term from ecology, environment
cul term from culture, education, arts, humanities
spo term from sports
hob term from hobby, leisure, traveling

adjtype

A deprecated feature. The only value that has not yet been moved elsewhere is pdt.

Value Description
pdt predeterminer (it is a special form of determiner; it is an adjectival word that can stand before an article, such as “all” in “all the flowers”)

prontype

Although it reads as “pronoun type” (and we use the word “pronoun” for simplicity), it is also applied to words that are usually not considered pronouns, such as determiners, interrogative/indefinite adverbs (where, there, when, then, how, why) etc.

Value Description
Empty value means that this is not a pronoun but a real noun, adjective, adverb etc.
prn The word is pronominal (or determiner) but we do not know the exact type.
prs Personal or possessive pronoun. Possessives are recognizable by the value of their poss feature. Reflexive pronouns are distinguished from normal personal/possessive pronouns by the value of their reflex feature.
rcp Reciprocal pronoun (German “einander”, Danish “hinanden”). Similar to personal pronouns but occurs as special case in object position.
art Article, i.e. determiner bearing only the feature of definiteness or indefinitess and nothing more (English “a”, “an”, “the”, German “der”, “die”, “das”, Portuguese “um”, “uma”, “o”, “a”, “os”, “as”).
int Interrogative pronoun / determiner / adverb (“who”, “what”, “which”).
rel Relative pronoun / determiner / adverb. Many interrogative pronouns in many languages can also be used as relative pronouns. However, in some languages there are pronouns that fall in one of the categories but not both (Czech “jenž” is only relative; in Bulgarian, relatives are completely separated from interrogatives). For words that can be both interrogative and relative, “int” is the default value.
exc Exclamative pronoun / determiner, expresses the speaker's surprise towards the modified noun, e.g. “what” in “What a surprise!” In many languages, exclamative determiners are recruited from the set of interrogative determiners. Therefore, not all tagsets distinguish them. For instance, they are distinguished in Spanish (es::conll2009), Catalan (ca::conll2009) and Persian (fa::conll).
dem Demonstrative pronoun / determiner / adverb (“this”, “that”). Being a demonstrative pronoun is not the same as being definite (definiteness=def), although the two feature-values are similar.
emp Emphatic pronoun / determiner. There are similarities with reflexive and demonstrative pronouns / determiners. Example: “himself” as in “He himself did it.” Czech “sám”, Romanian “însuși”.
neg Negative pronoun / determiner / adverb (“nobody, nothing, none”). This is not the same as the negativeness feature. Unlike e.g. negative and positive adjectives or verbs, negative pronouns are not complements of some “positive” pronouns. Instead, they usually correspond to zero, nothing.
ind Indefinite pronoun / determiner / adverb (“somebody”, “something”, “anybody”, “anything”). Being an indefinite pronoun is not the same as being morphologically indefinite (definiteness=ind). For instance, in Bulgarian there are morphologically definite lexically indefinite pronouns (“едната”, “едното”, “едните”, “нещата”). In some languages, we could subclassify the indefinite pronouns into “few” (“málokdo”), “ind” (“někdo”), “mny” (“leckdo”), “any” (“kdokoli” - anybody you pick but you pick only one, not all at once; this is the difference from the totality pronouns)
tot Total (universal) pronoun / determiner / adverb (“everybody”, “everything”)

numtype

Subclasses of numerals. See also prontype (interrogative and indefinite numerals set it), numform and numvalue.

Value Description
card cardinal number (includes Czech “čtvero”, which is classified as generic numeral in Czech grammar)
ord ordinal number
mult multiplicative number (adjectival: “twofold”, Czech “čtverý”; adverbial: “five times”)
frac fraction (“one fifth”)
sets number of sets of things, or of pluralia tantum (Czech “jedny”, “čtvery”)
dist distributive numeral (Hungarian “három-három” in “gyermekenként három-három ezer forinttal” = “three thousand forint per child”)
range range of values, subtype of card (“two-five” = “two to five”)

numform

Is a number expressed by a word or by digits? Depending on tokenization and tagging scheme, this feature may be orthogonal to the distinction between cardinals and ordinals.

Value Description
word numeral word (“fourteen”)
digit number written using digits (“14”)
roman number written using Roman numerals (“XIV”)
combi number written using digits and a suffix (“2009-ųjų”)

numvalue

Low-value numerals display special behavior in some languages (e.g. Czech). This feature helps distinguish them. See also accommodability.

Value Description
1 numeric value 1 (Czech “jeden”, “první”)
2 numeric value 2 (Czech “druhý”, “dvojí”, “dvojnásob”, “dva”, “nadvakrát”, “oba”, “obojí”)
3 numeric value 3 or 4 (Czech “čtvrtý”, “čtyři”, “potřetí”, “tři”, “třetí”, “třikrát”)

accommodability

Note that this feature has not been approved so far, as it only occurs rarely in the old version of the Polish corpus, and it is not clear what exactly it encodes.

In Polish, special behavior of numerals (cf. numvalue) cannot be predicted from the value of the number. So unlike the tagset for Czech, Polish IPI PAN tagset (version 1 only; it disappeared from version 2) takes a different approach and encodes “accommodability”. The key question is: Does the numeral agree in case with the counted noun, or does it govern the noun and force it to genitive plural?

Value Description
congr uzgadniająca (Polish “dwaj”, “pięcioma”)
rec rządząca (Polish “dwóch”, “dwu”, “pięciorgiem”)

Příklady rec: trzech wileńskich i dwóch warszawskich; wyszło wielu znakomitych uczonych, pobierało dwunastu studentów, pięciu mych współpracowników; dziewięciu profesorów opowiedziało się

Příklady congr: obaj byli indywidualnościami; wszyci trzej prowadzili; dwaj synowie: Czesław; obaj synowie studiowali; czterej profesorowie głosowali

Řada výskytů číslovek nemá (ani v té verzi 1) vyznačenu ani jednu hodnotu, např.: o kilku artykułach, przedstawił trzy swoje dzieła, wystąpił z sześcioma prelekcjami, z których trzy zostały…

verbtype

Value Description
aux auxiliary verb used to construct complex verb forms (Czech “být”, English “have”, “will”)
cop copula verb (Czech “být”)
mod modal verb (German “dürfen”, “können”, “mögen”, “müssen”, “sollen”, “wollen”, “wissen”; Czech “muset”, “mít”, “moci”, “smět”, “umět”, “chtít”; English “must”, “can”, “shall”); note that adverbs and particles have their own mod subpos
light light (support) verb in verbo-nominal constructions (Japanese “suru”)
verbconj finite verb with the enclitic “-ť” (Czech “neboť” = “because”)

advtype

Subclasses of adverbs. See also prontype (pronominal adverbs set it).

Value Description
man adverb of manner (“how”)
loc adverb of location (“where”)
tim adverb of time (“when”)
deg adverb of quantity or degree (“how much”)
cau adverb of cause (“why”)
mod adverb of modal nature (Bulgarian “апропо”, Czech “možno”, “nutno”, “radno”, “třeba”)
sta adverb of state (Czech “plno”, “zima”, “chyba”, “škoda”, “volno”, “nanic”)
adadj ad-adjective: special form in Finnish, derived from adjectives, used only to modify other adjectives (http://archives.conlang.info/pei/juenchen/phaelbhaduen.html)
ex existential “there” in English

adpostype

Value Description
prep preposition (“in”, “on”, “to”, “from”)
post postposition (German “entlang” in “der Strasse entlang”)
circ circumposition (German “von … an” in “von dieser Stelle an”)
voc vocalized preposition (Czech “ve” as opposed to base form “v”)
preppron preposition and pronoun in one word (Czech “proň” = “pro něj”, “nač” = “na co”)
comprep first part of compound preposition (Czech “nehledě na”, “vzhledem k”)

conjtype

Value Description
coor coordinating conjunction
sub subordinating conjunction
comp comparing conjunction (German “wie”, “als”)
oper mathematical operator (Czech “krát”)

parttype

Value Description
mod modal particle (Bulgarian “май” = “possibly”, “нека” = “let”; Czech “ať”, “kéž”, “nechť”)
emp particle of emphasis (Bulgarian “даже” = “even”)
res particle of response (“yes”, “no”)
inf infinitive marker (English “to”, German “zu”, Danish “at”, Swedish “att”). Sometimes tagged as particle, sometimes as conjunction, sometimes has its own part of speech.
vbp separated verb prefix (German “vor” in “stellen Sie sich vor”); analogical verbal particles in English?

punctype

Punctuation type.

Value Description
peri period at the end of sentence; in Penn tagset, includes question and exclamation
qest question mark
excl exclamation mark
quot quotation marks
brck bracket
comm comma
colo colon; in Penn tagset, “:” is in fact tag for generic other punctuation
semi semicolon
dash dash
root artificial sentence root node, beginning of sentence

puncside

Distinguishes between initial and final form of pairwise punctuation (brackets, quotation marks). Note that “initial” and “final” are better terms than “left” and “right”. The latter would be confusing in languages writing from right to left, like Arabic.

Value Description
ini initial (left bracket in English texts)
fin final (right bracket in English texts)

synpos

WARNING! This feature is deprecated. Most likely it will not be used in Interset version 2 drivers.

Does the pronoun or numeral behave syntactically as a noun, adjective, or adverb?

Value Description
subst substantive (like a noun)
attr attributive (like an adjective)
adv adverbial (like an adverb)
pred predicative adjective

morphpos

A word's morphological paradigm may behave like a different part of speech than the word is assigned to. For example, Slovak noun vstupné “admission (fee)” behaves syntactically as noun, is tagged as noun, but it originates from an adjective and retains adjectival paradigm. The paradigm feature of the sk::snk tagset maps to this Interset feature.

Value Description
noun nominal paradigm
adj adjectival paradigm
pron pronominal paradigm
num numeral paradigm
adv adverbial paradigm
mix mixed paradigm
def deficient paradigm (some declension forms are missing)

poss

Is this a possessive adjective or pronoun?

Value Description
yes possessive

reflex

Is this a reflexive pronoun?

Value Description
yes reflexive

polarity

Value Description
pos positive, affirmative
neg negative

definite

See also the prontype feature.
In Arabic, definiteness is also called the state.
http://www.grammaticalfeatures.net/features/definiteness.html
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_constructus
http://ufal.mff.cuni.cz/padt/PADT_1.0/docs/papers/2004-nemlar-padt.pdf

Value Description
ind indefinite
spec specific indefinite (“a certain stick”)
def definite
cons reduced: used in construct state in Arabic. If two nouns are in genitive relation, the first one (the “nomen regens”) has “reduced definiteness,” the second is the genitive and can be either definite or indefinite. Reduced form has neither the definite morpheme (article), nor the indefinite morpheme (nunation). For instance: indefinite state: حلوَةٌ ḥulwatun “a sweet”; definite state: الحلوَةُ al-ḥulwatu “the sweet”; حلوَةُ ḥulwatu “sweet of”.
com complex: used in improper annexation in Arabic. The genitive construction described above normally consists of two nouns (first reduced, second genitive). That is called proper annexation or iḍāfa. If the first member is an adjective or adjectivally used participle and the second member is a definite noun, the construction is called improper annexation or false iḍāfa. The result is a compound adjective that is usually used as an attributive adjunct and thus must agree in definiteness with the noun it modifies. Its first part (the adjective or participle) may get again the definite article. Although it may look the same as the form for the definite state, it is assigned a special value of complex state to reflect the different origin. See also Hajič et al. page 3. For instance: مُخْتَلِفٌ muxtalifun “different/various” (active participle, Form VIII); نَوْعٌ ج أنْوَاعٌ nawˀun ja anwāˀun “kind”; مُخْتَلِفُ الأنْوَاعِ muxtalifu al-anwāˀi “of various kinds” (false iḍāfa); مَشَاكِلُ مُخْتَلِفَةُ الأنْوَاعِ mašākilu muxtalifatu al-anwāˀi “problems of various kinds”; اَلْمَشَاكِلُ الْمُخْتَلِفَةُ الأنْوَاعِ al-mašākilu al-muxtalifatu al-anwāˀi “the problems of various kinds”.

foreign

Value Description
yes foreign word (not a loan word but a citation in a foreign language — e.g., the title of a foreign book)

gender

Value Description
masc masculine
fem feminine
com common, utrum
neut neuter

possgender

Possgender is possessor's gender.

Value Description
masc masculine
fem feminine
com common, utrum
neut neuter

animacy

Value Description
anim animate
inan inanimate
hum human
nhum not human

Some languages distinguish only animate vs. inanimate, where the animate category includes humans, animals, fictious characters and sometimes also personified things. Some languages distinguish human vs. nonhuman, i.e. animals fall into the latter category. Some languages, e.g. Polish (see below) have a three-value system: human vs. animate non-human vs. inanimate. In that case we use the nhum value to denote the non-human animates, i.e. it excludes inanimates (while in hum-nhum systems, the nhum label includes inanimates).

The Polish word “który” (which) is an example of three-value animacy:

gender sg-nom sg-gen sg-dat sg-acc sg-ins sg-loc pl-nom pl-gen pl-dat pl-acc pl-ins pl-loc
animate human który którego któremu którego którym którym którzy których którym których którymi których
animate non-human który którego któremu którego którym którym które których którym które którymi których
inanimate który którego któremu który którym którym które których którym które którymi których

number

Value Description
sing singular
dual dual
tri trial
pauc paucal
grpa greater paucal
plur plural
grpl greater plural
inv inverse
ptan plurale tantum
coll collective / mass / singulare tantum
count “counting form”, “count plural” or “quantitative plural” in Bulgarian and Macedonian (Sussex and Cubberley 2006, p. 324). It is a special plural form of nouns if they occur after numerals. (The form originates in the Proto-Slavic dual but it should not be marked as dual because 1. the dual vanished from Bulgarian and 2. the form is no longer semantically tied to the number two.)

Pluralia tantum is a special case of plural, occurring e.g. in Czech. It applies to words that do not have singular forms. They use grammatical plural regardless of semantic number. Czech example: nůžky “scissors”: Papír rozstříhejte nůžkami. “Use scissors to cut the paper to pieces.” (semantic singular) vs. Koupil jsem si dvoje nůžky. “I bought two pairs of scissors.” (semantic plural)

Collective or mass or singularia tantum is a special case of singular. It applies to words that use grammatical singular to describe sets of objects, i.e. semantic plural. Although in theory they might be able to form plural, in practice it would be rarely semantically plausible. Sometimes, the plural form exists and means “several sorts of”. Czech example: lidstvo “mankind”.

possnumber

Possnumber is possessor's number.

Value Description
sing singular
dual dual
plur plural

It applies e.g. to possessive pronouns and it can be different from their grammatical number, which is governed by agreement with the modified (possessed) noun phrase. Czech example: můj pes “my dog” (grammatical singular, possessor singular), mí psi “my dogs” (grammatical plural, possessor singular), náš pes “our dog” (grammatical singular, possessor plural), naši psi “our dogs” (grammatical plural, possessor plural).

possednumber

Possednumber is the possessee's (possessed, owned noun phrase's) number.

Value Description
sing singular
dual dual
plur plural

In Hungarian, possession can be marked on the possessor or on the possessed. It is possible, though rare, that a noun has three distinct number features: its own grammatical number, number of its possessor and number of its possession. Examples from the Multext-East Hungarian lexicon:

Words marked for plural possessions are very rare, though. Note that in the following example from Multext-East, Columbus is marked for plural possession, but not for his own owner.

case

Value Description Examples
nom nominative cs: dům, budova = a house, building
gen genitive cs: domu, budovy = of a house; in Basque, this is possessive genitive (as opposed to locative genitive): diktadorearen erregimena = dictator's regime (diktadore = dictator)
dat dative cs: domu, budově = to a house
acc accusative or oblique cs: dům, budovu = a house
voc vocative cs: dome, budovo = hey, you house!
loc locative cs: v domě, budově = in a house; used also for locative genitive (as opposed to possessive genitive) in Basque: talde anarkistako = group of anarchists
ins instrumental / instructive cs: domem, budovou = with/through/using/by a house. A semantically similar case called instructive is used rarely in Finnish to express “with (the aid of)”. It can be applied to infinitives that behave much like nouns in Finnish. We propose one label for both instrumental and instructive (instrumental is not defined in Finnish). Examples: [fi] lähteä “to leave”; 2003 lähtien “since 2003” (second infinitive in the instructive case); yllättää “to surprise”; sekaantui yllättäen valtataisteluun lit. was-involved-in by-surprise.Ins power-struggle.Ill.
abl ablative hu: a barátomtól jövök = jdu od kamaráda fi: pöydältä = se stolu; katolta = se střechy; rannalta = z pláže
par partitive Ve finštině vyjadřuje neznámou identitu a neukončené akce bez výsledku. Příklady užití: kolme taloa = tři domy (koncovka -a u talo); rakastan tätä taloa = mám rád tento dům; saanko lainata kirjaa? = můžu si půjčit tu knihu? (koncovka -a u kirja); lasissa on maitoa = ve sklenici je (nějaké) mléko; akuzativ: ammuin karhun = zastřelil jsem medvěda (a vím, že je mrtvý); partitiv: ammuin karhua = střelil jsem po medvědovi (a nevím ani, jestli jsem ho trefil); Akuzativ (v opozici k partitivu) taky může suplovat chybějící budoucí čas: akuzativ: luen kirjan = přečtu si tu knihu; partitiv: luen kirjaa = čtu knihu
dis distributive Vyjadřuje, že se něco stalo každému prvku množiny, jednomu po druhém. Nebo vyjadřuje frekvenci v čase. hu: fejenként = na hlavu, esetenként = v některém případě, hetenként = jednou týdně, tízpercenként = každých deset minut
ess essive / prolative Určuje dočasný stav, často odpovídá anglickému “as a …”. fi: lapsi = dítě, lapsena = jako dítě, když byl dítě ee: laps = dítě, lapse = dítěte (genitiv), lapsena = jako dítě. Similar case called prolative in Basque grammar: eu: erreformistatzat = as a reformer (erreformista = reformer)
tra translative / factive Určuje změnu stavu (“stává se X”, “mění se na X”). Také význam “v (jazyce)”. Finština. pitkä = dlouhý, venyi pitkäksi = prodloužil se englanti = angličtina, englanniksi = v angličtině kello kuusi = šest hodin, kello kuudeksi = do šesti hodin ee: kell kuus = šest hodin, kella kuueks = do šesti hodin. In Szeged Treebank called factive. hu: Oroszlány halott várossá válhat. = lit. Oroszlány dead city/tra could-become. = Oroszlány could become a dead city.
com comitative / associative Vyjadřuje “společně s”. ee: koeraga = se psem (koer = pes)
abe abessive Vyjadřuje “bez”. fi: rahatta = bez peněz (raha = peníze)
ine inessive hu: házban = v domě (ház = dům) fi: talossa = v domě (talo = dům) ee: majas = v domě (maja = dům)
ela elative hu: házból = z domu fi: talosta = z domu ee: majast = z domu
ill illative hu: házba = do domu fi: taloon = do domu ee: majasse / majja = do domu
add additive Distinguished by some scholars in Estonian, not recognized by traditional grammar, exists in the Multext-East Estonian tagset and in the Eesti keele puudepank. Reportedly same or similar meaning as illative. Forms of this case exist only in singular and not for all nouns.
ade adessive hu: asztalon = na stole (asztal = stůl) fi: pöydällä = na stole ee: laual = na stole (laud = stůl)
all allative fi: pöydälle = na stůl (pöytä = stůl)
sub sublative Used in Finno-Ugric languages to express the destination of movement, originally to the surface of something (e.g. climb a tree), and, by extension, in other figurative meanings as well (eg to university). hu: Belgrádtól 150 kilométerre délnyugatra = Belgrade/abl 150 kilometer/sub southwest/sub = 150 kilometers southwest of Belgrade. hu: hajóra = na loď (hajó = loď), bokorra = na keř
sup superessive Used, chiefly in Hungarian, to indicate location on top of something or on the surface of something. hu: asztalon = on the table (asztal = table), könyveken = on books (könyvek = books)
del delative Used, chiefly in Hungarian, to express the movement from the surface of something (like “moved off the table”). hu: az asztalról = off the table. Směr “z, od”, ale používá se i v jiných významech (např. “o něčem”). hu: Budapestről vagyok = jsem, přicházím z Budapešti
lat lative Denotes movement towards/to/into/onto something. Similar case in Basque is called directional allative (Spanish adlativo direccional). However, lative is typically thought of as a union of allative, illative and sublative, while in Basque it is derived from allative, which also exists independently. eu: beherantz = down (behe = low)
per perlative Denotes movement along something. Used in Warlpiri: yurutu = road; yurutuwana = along the road. Andrews (pp. 161-164) in Shopen: Language Typology vol. 1
tem temporal Určuje čas. hu: hétkor = v sedm, éjfélkor = o půlnoci, karácsonykor = o Vánocích
ter terminative Specifies where something ends in space or time. Similar case in Basque is called terminal allative (Spanish adlativo terminal). ee: jõeni = down to the river; ee: kella kuueni = till six o'clock; hu: a házig = up to the house; hu: hat óráig = till six o'clock; eu: erdiraino = up to the half (erdi = half)
abs absolutive Subject of intransitive verb, direct object of transitive verb.
erg ergative Subject of transitive verb.
cau causative / motivative Noun in this case is the cause of something. hu: Hálás leszekérte. eu: jokaeragatik = because of behavior (jokaera = behavior)
ben benefactive / destinative Corresponds to the preposition “for”. eu: mutilarentzat = for boys (mutil = boy)
cns considerative Denotes something that is given in exchange for something else. Used in Warlpiri: miyi = food; miyiwanawana = in exchange for food. Andrews (pp. 161-164) in Shopen: Language Typology vol. 1
equ equative “X-like”, “similar to X”, “same as X”. It marks the standard of comparison and it differs from the equative degree, which marks the property being compared. tr: bence = like me (ben = I)
cmp comparative “than X”. It marks the standard of comparison and it differs from the comparative degree, which marks the property being compared. It occurs in Dravidian and Northeast-Caucasian languages.
Where Where to Where from
Inside of inessive illative elative
Surface of adessive allative ablative
Surface of superessive sublative delative

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grammatical_cases
http://www.hungarianreference.com/Nouns/-n-superessive.aspx

Ten příklad s knihou u partitivu máš blbě, ne? “Saanko lainata kirjaa?” je “Můžu si půjčit knihu?”, “tu knihu” by bylo “kirjan”, ne? — stepanek 30.10.2009 12:45

Copak já vím? Finsky neumím. Je to převzaté z anglické Wikipedie. — zeman 31.10.2009 16:29

prepcase

Personal pronouns in some languages have different forms depending on whether they are objects of prepositions or not. For instance, Czech “on” (he) without prepositions has the forms jemu/DAT, jeho/ACC, jím/INS, while with a preposition it is němu/DAT, něho/ACC, ním/INS. Similarly, Portuguese pronouns in prepositional oblique case take forms different from oblique pronouns serving as direct objects of verbs: eu/NOM (I), me/ACC (give me that), mim/PREP-ACC (come to me).

Default empty value means that the word form is neutral w.r.t. a prepositional head.

Value Description
npr this form must not be used after a preposition (Czech “jemu”)
pre this form must be used after a preposition (Czech “němu”)

degree

Degree of comparison.

Value Description
pos positive, first degree (note that although this degree is traditionally called “positive”, negative properties can be compared, too)
cmp comparative, second degree
sup superlative, third degree
abs absolute superlative
equ equative (“same quality as the other object”)
dim diminutive (used for nouns e.g. in Dutch: “stoeltje”, “huisje”, “nippertje”)
aug augmentative (for nouns, opposite of diminutive; both dim and aug are used in the Freeling tagset of Portuguese

person

Value Description
0 zero / impersonal construction
1 first (I, we)
2 second (you)
3 third (he, she, it, they)
4 fourth (i.e. another third person, morphologically distinguished from the main third person)

Note that this feature is used also for possessive pronouns, where it means the person of the possessor. E.g. “my” has person=1, “your” has person=2, “their” has person=3.

possperson

Possperson is possessor's person, marked e.g. in Hungarian. Don't use it for possessive pronouns (use person instead).

Value Description
1 first (my, our)
2 second (your)
3 third (his, her, its, their)

clusivity

Value Description
in inclusive we = I + you (+ optionally they) (Indonesian “kita”)
ex exclusive we = I + they (excluding you) (Indonesian “kami”)

polite

Value Description
infm informal (Czech “ty/vy”, German “du/ihr”, Spanish “tú/vosotros”)
form formal / polite (Czech “vy”, German “Sie”, Spanish “usted”)
elev elevated status of referent/addressee, subtype of form
humb humbled status of speaker, subtype of form

(abs|erg|dat)(person|number|polite|gender)

In quite a few languages, finite verb forms agree in person and number with the subject. In Basque, a subset of verbs agree with up to three arguments: one in the absolutive case, one in ergative and one in dative. To distinguish the different values of person, number (and politeness and rarely even gender), there are special features for each of the three arguments. Their names contain the three-letter code of the case of the argument: absperson, absnumber, ergperson, ergnumber etc. The value range is identical to the base features. That is, absnumber, ergnumber and datnumber may get the same values as number.

position

Adjectives in some languages (e.g. in Dutch) have different forms depending on how and where they are used. The same may hold for determiners (including possessive pronouns), quantifiers, numerals and participles.

Note: This feature has been introduced because of the nl::cgn tagset of Dutch. Similar features were previously observed in other tagsets (e.g. fa::conll) and they could be now re-implemented using this new Interset feature. We may also consider using this feature to distinguish the nominal (short) and pronominal (long) forms of Czech adjectives, the adverbial forms of German adjectives etc. (these are currently distinguished using the variant feature).

Value Description
prenom modifies a following noun; Dutch “vrij” in “een vrije vogel” or “mooi” in “een mooi huis”
postnom modifies a preceding noun; Dutch “bevaarbaar” in “rivieren bevaarbaar in de winter”
nom adjective constituting a noun phrase, inflected as a noun; Dutch “rijken” in “de rijken” = “the rich”
free adjective used independently, i.e. not as a noun and not modifying a noun; a predicative or adverbial usage; Dutch “vrij” in “de vogels vrij laten rondvliegen”

subcat

There are tag sets (e.g. Bulgarian CoNLL) that classify verbs as intransitive or transitive.

Value Description
intr intransitive verb
tran transitive verb

verbform

Value Description
fin finite
inf infinitive
sup supine (with motion verbs: “go do something”; infinitive used in languages where there is no supine)
part participle (present (“doing”), past (“done”), passive (Czech “udělán” distinguished from adjective “udělaný” by variant=short)), gerundive
conv converb, transgressive, adverbial participle (modifies other verbs, behaves like adverb; Czech present “dělaje”, past “udělav”; some authors also call it gerund!)
vnoun verbal noun
ger gerund. Deprecated in cases which are traditionally called gerund but could be plausibly called verbal noun (see above). Latin gerundium: “amare” ⇒ genitive “amandi”, dative “amando”, accusative “(ad) amandum”, ablative “amando”.
gdv gerundive (verbal adjective). Latin gerundivum: “portāre” ⇒ “portandus, portanda, portandum”

mood

Value Description
ind indicative
imp imperative
cnd conditional
pot potential (Finnish: the action of the verb is likely but not certain)
sub subjunctive (conjunctive) (spojovací)
jus jussive (přací)
prp purposive (in order to)
qot quotative (Estonian: denotes direct speech)
opt optative (Turkish; “May you have a long life! If only I were rich!”)
des desiderative (Turkish; “He wants to come.”)
nec necessitative (Turkish; “He must come. He should come.”)
adm admirative (Albanian; expresses surprise, irony or doubt)

tense

Note: In Interset 1.0, there were two separate features, tense and subtense, the latter consisting of the values aor, imp, nar and pqp. We used to avoid hierarchical feature values (e.g. aorist implies past; but many languages will only know past and their drivers will not check for the aor value). Hierarchical ordering of feature values is now normal and there are algorithms to exploit the hierarchy when a feature has to be replaced by another value, thus these two features have been merged.

Note that, unfortunately, imperfect tense is not always the same as past tense + imperfective aspect. For instance, in Bulgarian, there is lexical aspect, inherent in verb meaning, and grammatical aspect, which does not necessarily always match the lexical one. In main clauses, imperfective verbs can have imperfect tense and perfective verbs have perfect tense. However, both rules can be violated in embedded clauses. Aorist is aspect-neutral and can freely appear with both imperfective and perfective verbs.

Value Description
past past
pres present
fut future
aor aorist
imp imperfect
pqp pluperfect

aspect

See Wikipedia for a list of possible aspects.

Value Description
imp imperfect
perf perfect
prosp prospective
prog progressive
hab habitual
iter iterative, frequentative

voice

Value Description
act active
mid middle (Ancient Greek; neither active nor passive but somewhere inbetween; they have also mediopassive, which can be expressed as “voice=mid|pass”)
pass passive
rcp reciprocal (Turkish “karıştı”, “tutuştular”)
cau causative (Turkish “karıştırıyor” (“is confusing”))
antip antipassive
dir direct
inv inverse

Documentation of the METU Sabanci treebank classifies causative as voice (page 26). Note that this is a feature of verbs. There are languages that have also the causative case of nouns.

evident

Evidentiality: what is the speaker's source of information?

Value Description
fh firsthand
nfh nonfirsthand

abbr

Is this an abbreviation?

Value Description
yes abbreviation

hyph

Is this a part of a hyphenated compound?

Value Description
yes hyphenated prefix (“anglo-” in “anglo-saxon”)

echo

Is this a reduplicative or echo word? Such words occur in Hindi. In Hyderabad Dependency Treebank they get their own part-of-speech tags RDP and ECH, respectively. We do not want to treat them as separate parts of speech because they could be assigned a POS independent of their RDP or ECH status (same as the word that they echo). We may want to merge this feature in future with hyph into a new feature called compound.

Value Meaning Explanation Examples
rdp reduplicative The word is a copy of a previous word. In Hindi, this would add the meaning of distribution (“one rupee each”), separation (“sit separately”), variety, diversity or just emphasis. hi: “कभी - कभी” = “kabhī - kabhī” = “sometimes”, “कभी” = “kabhī” = “sometimes”; “एक एक” = “eka eka” = “one each”, “एक” = “eka” = “one”
ech echo The word rhymes with a previous word but it is not identical to it and typically it does not have any meaning of its own. In Hindi it generalizes the meaning of the previous word and eventually translates as “or something”, “etc.” etc. hi: “चाय वाय” = “čāya vāya” = “tea or something” (as in “Have some tea or something.”)

For more details see Rupert Snell and Simon Weightman: Teach Yourself Hindi, Section 16.4 and 16.5, pages 210 – 211.

style

Value Description
arch archaic, obsolete
rare rare
form formal, literary
poet poetic
norm normal, neutral
coll colloquial
vrnc vernacular
slng slang
expr expressive, emotional
derg derogative
vulg vulgar

typo

Indicates bad spelling, grammatical error etc. Does not say how the correct form looks like. Must be separated from the style feature because there can be typo in archaic as well as colloquial form.

Value Description
yes typo, bad spelling, error

strength

Distinguishes between strong and weak forms of adjectives or pronouns. Used e.g. in Romanian UD. See also the variant feature. Some tagsets use variant=long instead of strength=strong, and variant=short instead of strength=weak. However, the strength feature has been tentatively added to Interset because it is slightly more specific and also because we want to be able to seamlessly read the features from the UD corpora that use it.

Value Description
weak weak form
strong strong form

variant

Allows for distinguishing between word forms that otherwise would share values of all features.

Value Description
short short form
long long form
0 variant form 0
1 variant form 1
2 variant form 2
3 variant form 3
4 variant form 4
5 variant form 5
6 variant form 6
7 variant form 7
8 variant form 8
9 variant form 9
a variant form a (abbreviation in PDT-C)
b variant form b (abbreviation in PDT-C)
c variant form c (abbreviation in PDT-C)

tagset, other

The tagset feature identifies the source tag set driver. Value should be identical to the name of the driver that filled the feature values. (The recommended format is same as in the use statement, without the tagset:: prefix, e.g. “de::stts”. Works together with the “other” feature.

Feature “other”
Any value or reference to array or hash is allowed. Serves to preserve information if the decoding driver happens to be the one who did the encoding. No other driver should expect anything meaningful here.
Only information that cannot be stored in other features should be stored here.
The apparently easiest approach — to store the complete original tag — will not work if the user needs to change feature values between decode() and encode().

Note that the tagset feature may sometimes refer to a related but different driver. For instance, drivers cs::pmk and cs::pmkkr are related. The latter is a reduced version of the former and its implementation uses the code of the driver for cs::pmk. Both drivers share their interpretation of the values of the other feature. They thus also use the same value of the tagset feature, namely cs::pmk. Sharing this identifier helps one driver understand the other values set by the other driver. The derived driver has its own identifier, cs::pmkkr, but this identifier is never mentioned in the feature structures. It would be more precise to say that the tagset feature identifies the language used in the feature structure, rather than the source tagset.


[ Back to the navigation ] [ Back to the content ]