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. In Italian, adjectives can be used predicatively (as in La casa è gialla “The house is yellow”) and attributively (as in La casa gialla è a destra “The yellow house is on the right side”).
Adjectives in Italian normally agree in number and gender with the noun they modify (both in attributive and predicative position), e.g. la casa gialla (feminine singular), le case gialle (feminine plural).
The class of adjectives in Italian UD also includes ordinal numbers and participial adjectives, both behaving as adjectives morphologically and syntactically.
To conform to the UD guidelines, possessive adjectives are handled as determiners DET.
Corresponding language-specific part-of-speech tags
A: Adjective
NO: Ordinal Number
Examples
- grande “big”
- vecchio “old”
- verde “green”
- Un caro amico_ “a dear friend”
- Un libro interessante “An interesting book”
- Il cancello è aperto “The gate is open”
- È stato illuminante “It has been illuminating”
- primo “first”, secondo “second”, terzo “third”, IV “fourth”, ennesimo “nth”, ultimo “last”
ADP: adposition
Definition
Adposition is a cover term for prepositions and postpositions. In Italian, there are only prepositions.
Italian prepositions can take the form of fixed multi-word
expressions, such as invece di “instead of”, a causa di “because of”, davanti a “in front of”. The
component words are then still tagged according to their basic use
(i.e. a is ADP, causa is NOUN, di is ADP) and their status as a
multi-word expression is accounted for at the level of syntactic annotation.
See mwe for more details on the representation of multi-word expressions.
Italian prepositions are also used for introducing non-finite clausal complements, as in Maria ha deciso di partire “Mary decided to leave” or Maria è andata a congratularsi con loro “Mary went to congratulate them”.
Italian distinguishes between simple and articulated prepositions: note however that to comply with the UD Tokenization guidelines the latter are systematically splitted into the following sequence of part-of-speech tags, ADP and DET (e.g. nello “in the” is splitted into in ADP lo DET).
Corresponding language-specific part-of-speech tags
E: Preposition
Examples
- in casa “at home”
- a Milano “in Milan”
- durante la notte “during the night”
- davanti al cancello “in front of the gate”
- ha promesso di invitarlo a cena “he promised to invite him to dinner”
ADV: adverb
Definition
Adverbs are words that typically modify verbs for such categories as time, place, direction or manner. In Italian, they may also modify adjectives (as in palesemente falso “clearly fake”), other adverbs (as in molto bene “very well”), or even nouns / pronouns (as in proprio lui “exactly him”).
Corresponding language-specific part-of-speech tags
B: Adverb
BN: Negation adverb
Examples
- molto
- bene
- esattamente
- domani
- sù, giù
- interrogative adverbs: dove, quando, come, perché
- demonstrative adverbs: qui, là, ora, adesso, poi
- indefinite adverbs: talvolta
- totality adverbs: dovunque, sempre
- negation adverbs: no, mica, non, nemmeno, neanche, neppure
AUX: auxiliary verb
Definition
Italian auxiliary verbs can be divided into:
- tense auxiliaries, used to form compound tenses represented by avere “to have” and essere “to be”;
- passive auxiliaries, used to form passive verb forms represented by essere “to be” and venire lit. “to come”.
Following the UD guidelines, Italian modal verbs are handled as modal auxiliaries (e.g. potere “can”, dovere “must”).
Corresponding language-specific part-of-speech tags
VA: Auxiliary verb
VM: Modal verb
Examples
- Tense auxiliaries: ha fatto “he has done”, è arrivato “he has arrived”, sarà finito “it will be finished”
- Passive auxiliaries: fu distrutto “it was destroyed”, è stato comprato “it has been bought”
- Modal auxiliaries: dovrebbe fare “he should do”, può avere successo “he can have success”
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.
For subordinating conjunctions see SCONJ.
Examples
- e “and”
- o, oppure, ovvero “or”
- ma “but”
- sia … sia “both … and”
- né … né “neither … nor”
DET: determiner
Definition
Determiners are words that modify nouns or noun phrases and express the reference of the noun phrase in context. Like adjectives, Italian determiners typically agree with the noun they modify for gender and number, e.g. questo libro “this book” (masculin singular), i libri “the books” (masculin plural), la carta “the paper” (feminine singular).
In Italian, usually a nominal allows for one DET modifier only, with the following exceptions:
- predeterminers (or addeterminers), which are also tagged
DET. For example: Tutti gli amici “All the friends”. - possessive adjectives, which following the UD guidelines are also tagged as
DET. For example: Mio padre “my father”, la mia macchina lit. “the my car”, la figlia mia lit. “the daughter my”
Corresponding language-specific part-of-speech tags
RD: Definite article
RI: Indefinite article
DE: Exclamative determiner
DI: Indefinite determiner
DQ: Interrogative determiner
DR: Relative determiner
DD: Demonstrative determiner
T: Predeterminer
AP: Possessive adjective
Examples
- definite articles: il, lo, la, gli “the”
- indefinite articles: un, uno, una “a, an”
- demonstrative determiners: questo “this”, e.g. Ho visto questa macchina ieri. “I saw this car yesterday”
- interrogative determiners: quale “which”, e.g. Quale macchina ti piace? “Which car do you like?”
- relative determiners: quale “which”, e.g. Mi chiedo quale macchina ti piace. “I wonder which car you like”
- indefinite determiners: ogni “any”, tutti “all”, alcuni “some”, nessuno, nessuna “no”, e.g. Non abbiamo nessuna macchina disponibile “We have no car available”
- exclamative determiners: quale in Quale disastro! “What a mess!”
INTJ: interjection
An interjection is a form, typically brief, which is used most often as an exclamation or part of an exclamation.
As a special case of interjections, we recognize feedback particles such as: sì “yes” and no “no”. Note that uses of sì and no syntactically related to other accompanying expressions in a sentence are recognized as ADV.
Corresponding language-specific part-of-speech tags
I: Interjection
Examples
Marked as interjections:
- vabbè
- oddio
- ah
- ecco
- ciao
- sì, e.g. Sì, perché … “Yes, because …”, Sì, proprio l’Italia “Yes, Italy indeed”
- no, e.g. No, non lo credo “No, I don’t believe it”
Marked as adverbs:
- Elezioni sì, elezioni no “Elections yes, elections no”
- Voteremo sì “We will vote yes”
NOUN: noun
Definition
Nouns are a part of speech typically denoting a person, place, thing, animal or idea.
The NOUN tag is intended for common nouns only. See PROPN for
proper nouns and PRON for pronouns.
Corresponding language-specific part-of-speech tags
S: Common noun
Examples
- ragazza “girl”
- gatto “cat”
- albero “tree”
- aria “air”
- bellezza “beauty”
NUM: numeral
Definition
A numeral is a word, functioning most typically as a determiner, adjective or pronoun, that expresses a number and a relation to the number, such as quantity, sequence, frequency or fraction.
Cardinal numerals are covered by NUM whether they are used
as determiners or not (as in Windows Seven) and whether they
are expressed as words (four), or digits (4).
There are numerals belonging to other parts of speech in the universal tagging scheme, based mainly on syntactic criteria: e.g. ordinal numerals are tagged as adjectives or pronouns (first, second, third, …). In Italian there are no adverbial numerals like [cs] poprvé “for the first time” nor multiplicative numerals such as [en] (once, twice).
Note that, since Roman numerals (IV) are only used as ordinal numerals in Italian (Enciclopedia Treccani), are tagged ADJ for coherence with other ordinal numerals.
In this case we specify NumType=Ord as morphological feature.
A similar treatment is reserved to a cardinal with a suffix such as a, o, esimo, esima, or the symbol ° (similar to the English use of the suffix “th”).
Other words functioning as determiners (including quantifiers such as many and few) are tagged DET.
Examples
Tagged as NUM:
- 0, 1, 2, 2014, 1000000, 3,14159265359
- zero, uno, due, settantasette
Tagged as ADJ:
- XX secolo
- 48esimo
- primo, secondo, ultima
- 20°
Tagged as PRON:
- il terzo ad arrivare “the third to arrive”
References
PART: particle
The use of PART is limited to possessive markers, in English names: [en] ‘s.
According to the UD guidelines, particles may also encode grammatical categories such as negation, e.g.
- Negation particle: [en] not; [de] nicht; [tr] mu
In Italian however we tag negation particles, such as non, as a negation adverb. See ADV.
Examples
- Wendy ‘s
- McDonald ‘s
PRON: pronoun
Definition
Pronouns are words that substitute for nouns or noun phrases, whose meaning is recoverable from the linguistic or extralinguistic context.
Specializations of pronouns correspond to different language specific PoS leading to different values for the PronType feature.
Correspondance between language specific PoS and PronTypes
- PC (clitic pronouns) → PronType=Clit
- PD (demonstrative pronouns) → PronType=Dem
- PE (personal pronouns) → PronType=Prs
- PI (indefinite pronouns) → PronType=Ind
-
PP (possessive pronouns) → PronType=Prs Poss=Yes - PQ (interrogative pronouns) → PronType=Int
- PR (relative pronouns) → PronType=Rel
Note: the PronType=Clit feature is specific for Italian.
Examples
- clitic pronouns: ci, si, vi, la, lo, gli, including reflexive pronouns
- demonstrative pronouns: questo, codesto, coloro, medesimo, quello, ciò as in Questo è strano “This is strange”
- personal pronouns: io, tu, te, lui, lei, egli, esso, noi, loro
- indefinite pronouns: uno, altri, qualcuno, qualcosa, ciascuno
- possessive pronouns: mio, suo, loro
- interrogative pronouns: chi, che, cosa, quanto, quale as in Cosa pensi? “What do you think?”
- relative pronouns: che, cui, quale as in Il film che ho visto. “The movie that I have seen”
- totality pronouns: tutti, tutto
- negative pronouns: nessuno, niente, nulla
PROPN: proper noun
Definition
A proper noun is a noun that is the name (or part of the name) of a unique entity, be it an individual, a place, or an object.
Acronyms of proper nouns, such as UN and NATO, are also tagged as PROPN.
Corresponding language-specific part-of-speech tags
SP: Proper noun
Examples
- Maria, Michelangelo
- Londra
- Ansaldo Energia
- Kim Il Sung
- NATO, HBO, U.S.A.
PUNCT: punctuation
Definition
Punctuation marks are non-alphabetical characters and character groups used to delimit linguistic units in printed text.
Punctuation is not taken to include logograms such as $, %, and §, which are instead tagged as SYM.
Examples
- Period: .
- Comma: ,
- Parentheses: (, )
SCONJ: subordinating conjunction
Definition
A subordinating conjunction is a conjunction that links constructions by making one of them a constituent of the other. The subordinating conjunction typically marks the incorporated constituent which has the status of a (subordinate) clause.
We recognize these two subclasses as subordinating conjunctions:
- Complementizers, come “like”, che “that”, mentre “while”, se “if”
- Adverbial clause introducers, come “like”, quando “when”, poiché, perché “since”, or prima “before” (when introducing a clause not a nominal)
For coordinating conjunctions see CONJ.
Examples
- Credo che verrà. “I believe that he will come”
- È successo mentre ero al lavoro. “It happened while I was at work”
- Vado a casa prima che piova. “I go home before it starts raining”
SYM: symbol
Definition
A symbol is a word-like entity that differs from ordinary words by form, function, or both.
We recognize as symbols:
- currency symbols: $
- mathematical operators: µg / m3
- ’/’ used a separator: 2001 / 923 / CE
- emoticons and emoji: :-)
- URL’s and emails
The following are not symbols:
- Proper nouns with numbers and special characters: 130XE, DC10, DC-10 are tagged PROPN.
- Acronyms for proper nouns: UN, NATO are tagged as PROPN.
- Abbreviated words: Sig. (signore), kg (chilogrammo), km (chilometro), dott (dottore) are tagged NOUN.
- Characters used as bullets in itemized lists (*, •, ‣) are PUNCT.
Examples
- $, %, §, ©
- +, −, ×, ÷, =, <, >
- :), ♥‿♥, 😝
- john.doe@universal.org, http://universaldependencies.org/
VERB: verb
Definition
A verb is a member of the syntactic class of words typically denoting events and actions, constituting a minimal predicate in a clause, governing the number and types of dependents which may occur in the clause. In Italian verbs are associated with the following grammatical categories: tense, mood and voice, which can either be expressed inflectionally or using auxilliary verbs or particles.
Note that the VERB tag covers main verbs (content verbs) and copulas but it does not cover auxiliary verbs, for which the AUX tag is used.
Participles used as adjectives are classified as ADJ.
Corresponding language-specific part-of-speech tags
V: Main verb
Examples
- correre “run”, mangiare “eat”
- corse, mangiò
- correndo, mangiando
- è stata mangiata
X: other
Definition
The tag X is used for words that for some reason cannot be assigned
a real part-of-speech category.
Note that the universal guidelines recommend the usage of X for cases of code-switching where it is not possible (or meaningful) to analyze the intervening language grammatically (and where the dependency relation foreign is
typically used in the syntactic analysis). The PoS tag for Italian in such cases is SW (foreign noun) and is mapped into X in the conversion.
This usage does not extend to ordinary loan words where it is assigned a normal part-of-speech.
Examples
- tout court
- res nullius
- pro capite