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Degree: degree of comparison

In English, Degree is a feature of (adjectives)[en-pos/ADJ] and some (adverbs)[en-pos/ADV].

Pos: positive, first degree

This is the base form that merely states a quality of something, without comparing it to qualities of others. Note that although this degree is traditionally called “positive”, negative properties can be compared, too. All words with PTB tags JJ have this feature.

Examples

• young woman

Additionally, the following adverbs with PTB tag RB also have this feature:

• hard, fast, late, long, high, easy, early, far, soon, low, close, well, badly, little

Cmp: comparative, second degree

The quality of one object is compared to the same quality of another object. All words with PTB tags JJR are marked with this feature.

Examples

• The man is younger than me.

The following adverbs with PTB tag RBR also have this feature:

• harder, faster, later, longer, higher, easier, earlier, further, farther, sooner, lower, closer, better, worse, less, quicker, slower

Sup: superlative, third degree

The quality of one object is compared to the same quality of all other objects within a set. All words with PTB tags JJS are marked with this feature.

Examples

• This is the youngest woman in our team.

The following adverbs with PTB tag RBS also have this feature:

• hardest, fastest, latest, longest, highest, easiest, earliest, furthest, farthest, soonest, lowest, closest, best, worst, least, quickest, slowest

Note that most adverbs in English don’t have a Degree feature because their sencond and third degree are constructed periphrastically using the adverbs more and most, e.g. more quietly, most seriously.

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Treebank Statistics (UD_English)

This feature is universal. It occurs with 3 different values: Cmp, Pos, Sup.

16346 tokens (7%) have a non-empty value of Degree. 2872 types (15%) occur at least once with a non-empty value of Degree. 2414 lemmas (15%) occur at least once with a non-empty value of Degree. The feature is used with 5 part-of-speech tags: en-pos/ADJ (15602; 6% instances), en-pos/ADV (739; 0% instances), en-pos/PROPN (3; 0% instances), en-pos/INTJ (1; 0% instances), en-pos/NOUN (1; 0% instances).

ADJ

15602 en-pos/ADJ tokens (100% of all ADJ tokens) have a non-empty value of Degree.

ADJ tokens may have the following values of Degree:

• Cmp (583; 4% of non-empty Degree): more, better, less, larger, bigger, earlier, older, smaller, worse, higher
• Pos (14485; 93% of non-empty Degree): good, great, other, new, many, last, same, few, sure, little
• Sup (534; 3% of non-empty Degree): best, most, worst, cheapest, largest, latest, easiest, highest, oldest, biggest
• EMPTY (12): fake, such, Every, Global, Pakistani, criminal, enough, female, middle, real

Paradigm less	Pos	Cmp	Sup
	less	less	less

Degree seems to be lexical feature of ADJ. 100% lemmas (2397) occur only with one value of Degree.

ADV

739 en-pos/ADV tokens (6% of all ADV tokens) have a non-empty value of Degree.

The most frequent other feature values with which ADV and Degree co-occurred: PronType=EMPTY (739; 100%).

ADV tokens may have the following values of Degree:

• Cmp (155; 21% of non-empty Degree): later, better, longer, earlier, less, sooner, further, closer, higher, faster
• Pos (488; 66% of non-empty Degree): well, far, soon, long, hard, early, late, close, little, high
• Sup (96; 13% of non-empty Degree): least, best, worst, highest, longest
• EMPTY (12134): so, just, very, when, also, how, now, even, there, then

Degree seems to be lexical feature of ADV. 100% lemmas (37) occur only with one value of Degree.

PROPN

3 en-pos/PROPN tokens (0% of all PROPN tokens) have a non-empty value of Degree.

The most frequent other feature values with which PROPN and Degree co-occurred: Number=EMPTY (3; 100%).

PROPN tokens may have the following values of Degree:

• Pos (3; 100% of non-empty Degree): Central, Modern, english
• EMPTY (16266): US, bush, al, enron, Iraq, Iran, China, Qaeda, New, united

INTJ

1 en-pos/INTJ tokens (0% of all INTJ tokens) have a non-empty value of Degree.

INTJ tokens may have the following values of Degree:

• Pos (1; 100% of non-empty Degree): Bon
• EMPTY (916): please, yes, well, no, hi, like, ok, lol, hey, oh

NOUN

1 en-pos/NOUN tokens (0% of all NOUN tokens) have a non-empty value of Degree.

The most frequent other feature values with which NOUN and Degree co-occurred: Number=EMPTY (1; 100%).

NOUN tokens may have the following values of Degree:

• Pos (1; 100% of non-empty Degree): equivalant
• EMPTY (41844): time, people, service, place, thanks, food, way, day, year, years

Relations with Agreement in Degree

The 10 most frequent relations where parent and child node agree in Degree: ADJ –[conj]–> ADJ (606; 97%), ADJ –[amod]–> ADJ (104; 95%), ADJ –[advcl]–> ADJ (41; 87%), ADJ –[parataxis]–> ADJ (36; 88%), ADJ –[ccomp]–> ADJ (23; 96%), ADJ –[nmod]–> ADJ (22; 56%), ADJ –[nmod:npmod]–> ADJ (15; 65%), ADJ –[list]–> ADJ (13; 93%), ADJ –[nsubj]–> ADJ (12; 92%), ADJ –[appos]–> ADJ (9; 100%).

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