POS tags
| Open class words | Closed class words | Other |
|---|---|---|
| ADJ | ADP | PUNCT |
| ADV | AUX | SYM |
| INTJ | CONJ | X |
| NOUN | DET | |
| PROPN | NUM | |
| VERB | PART | |
| PRON | ||
| SCONJ |
ADJ: adjective
Definition
Adjectives are words that typically modify nouns and specify their properties or attributes. Adjectives in French agree in gender and number with the noun they modify (both in attributive and predicative position).
Examples
- grand/grande/grands/grandes “big”
- vieux/vieille/vieilles “old”
ADP: adposition
Definition
Adposition is a cover term for prepositions and postpositions. French has only prepositions.
Examples
- pour “for”
- de “of, to”
- à “to”
- dans “in”
ADV: adverb
Definition
Adverbs are words that typically modify adjectives, verbs or other adverbs for such categories as time, place, direction or manner.
Examples
- très joli “very nice”
- fondues ensemble “melted together”
AUX: auxiliary verb
Definition
An auxiliary verb is a verb that accompanies the lexical verb of a verb phrase and expresses grammatical distinctions not carried by the lexical verb, such as person, number, tense, mood, aspect, and voice.
French auxiliary verbs can be divided into tense auxiliaries, modal auxiliaries and passive auxiliaries.
Delimitation
The exact delimitation of auxiliaries in French is not completely clear-cut, especially for the category of modal auxiliaries. In the French UD treebank, we have adopted a consensus solution based on the original Google annotation and the universal UD guidelines. Below we list the verbs that may appear in each group:
- Tense auxiliary: aller (future périphrastique), être, avoir
- Modal auxiliary (+ infinitive): savoir, pouvoir, devoir, vouloir, falloir, voir, aimer, souhaiter
- Passive auxiliary: être, aller
CONJ: coordinating conjunction
Definition
A coordinating conjunction is a word that links words or larger constituents without syntactically subordinating one to the other and expresses a semantic relationship between them.
Examples
- mais “but”
- ou “or”
- et “and”
- donc “thus”
- or “however”
- ni “nor”
- car “because”
DET: determiner
Definition
We follow the definition for DET proposed in the universal scheme.
However note that at the moment numerals are not consistently annotated as NUM, and are sometimes marked as DET.
For demonstratives such as ce …-là, ce …-ci (as in cet homme-ci, cette femme-là “this man, that women”), the first part of the determiner is annotated as DET and the clitic ci, là (which are split from the noun) are marked as PART.
Examples
- articles (a closed class indicating definiteness, specificity or givenness): le, la, les
- possessive determiners: mon, ton, son, ma, ta, sa, mes, tes, ses, notre, votre, leur, nos, vos, leurs
- demonstrative determiners: e.g., ce, cet, cette as in J’ai vu ce vélo hier.
- interrogative determiners: quel, quelle as in “Quelle couleur aimez-vous?”
- relative determiners: quel, quelle as in “Je me demande quelle couleur vous aimez.”
- quantity/quantifier determiners: aucun, tous (as in “tous les”).
INTJ: interjection
Definition
An interjection is a word that is used most often as an exclamation or part of an exclamation.
Examples
- bref
- bon “well”
- enfin _ attention
NOUN: noun
Definition
Nouns are a part of speech typically denoting a person, place, thing, animal or idea. Common nouns are tagged as NOUN.
Examples
- fille “girl”
- chat “cat”
- arbre “tree”
- air “air”
- beauté “beauty”
NUM: numeral
Definition
A numeral is a word, functioning most typically as a determiner, a pronoun or an adjective, that expresses a number and a relation to the number, such as quantity, sequence, frequency or fraction.
Cardinal numerals are covered by NUM regardless of syntactic function and regardless of whether they are expressed as words (quatre “four”), digits (4) or Roman numerals (IV). By contrast, ordinal numerals are always tagged ADJ.
Note: Numerals are not yet consistently annotated in the French UD treebank, and sometimes appear as ADJ or DET.
PART: particle
Definition
Particles are function words that must be associated with another word or phrase to impart meaning and that do not satisfy definitions of other universal parts of speech (e.g., adpositions, coordinating conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions or auxiliary verbs).
Examples
- ci,là in demonstrative determiners such as ce gars-ci “this guy”
- euphonic t in “a-t-il” for example
- ne,n’ in the double negation marker “ne … pas” (pas is tagged as
ADV)
PRON: pronoun
Definition
Pronouns are words that substitute for nouns or noun phrases. Their meaning is recoverable from the linguistic or extralinguistic context.
Examples
- personal pronouns: je, tu, il
- demonstrative pronouns: ceux
- reflexive pronous: me, se
- interrogative/relative pronouns: qui, que
PROPN: proper noun
Definition
A proper noun is a noun (or nominal content word) that is the name (or part of the name) of a specific individual, place, or object.
The names of people living in a place (such as Les Américains “The Americans”) should be tagged as NOUN (but this is not yet done consistently in the French data).
Examples
- Pierre
- ONU
- Mexique
PUNCT: punctuation
Definition
Punctuation marks are non-alphabetical characters and character groups used to delimit linguistic units in printed text. They are tagged PUNCT regardless of their function.
SCONJ: subordinating conjunction
Definition
A subordinating conjunction is a conjunction that links constructions by making one of them a constituent of the other.
Examples
- quand “when”
- parce que “because”: for multiword subordinating conjunction of the sort (e.g., afin que, avant que), que is tagged as
SCONJand the first term is tagged asADV.
SYM: symbol
Definition
A symbol is a word-like entity that differs from ordinary words by form, function, or both.
Examples
- $, %, §, ©
- +, −, ×, ÷, =, <, >
- :), ♥‿♥, 😝
- john.doe@universal.org, http://universaldependencies.org/, 1-800-COMPANY
VERB: verb
Definition
A verb is a member of the syntactic class of words that typically signal events and actions, can constitute a minimal predicate in a clause, and govern the number and types of other constituents which may occur in the clause.
The tag VERB is reserved for full lexical verbs, while auxiliary verbs are tagged AUX.
Examples
- je vois “I see”
- à lire “to read”
- en marchant “walking”
X: other
Definition
The tag X is used for words that for some reason cannot be assigned a real part-of-speech category.
Note: Some acronyms and foreign words which could be assigned a real part-of-speech category have not yet been fixed and are still marked as X.
Examples
- etc