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. They may also function as predicates, as in
Ця машина є зелена. “The car is green.”
The ADJ tag is intended for ordinary adjectives only. See DET
for determiners and NUM for cardinal numerals.
In accord with the UD approach, adjectival ordinal numerals (перший, сьомий, стошістдесятий) are tagged as adjectives, although the traditional grammar classifies them as numerals. They behave like adjectives both morphologically and syntactically, with the exception that they cannot be compared and negated.
Most Ukrainian adjectives inflect for uk-feat/Gender (великий – велика – велике) “big”, uk-feat/Number (великий – великі), and uk-feat/Case (великий – великого – великому – великим – великім), uk-feat/Degree (великий – більший – найбільший).
Examples
- великий “big”
- старий “old”
- зелений “green”
- батьків, материн “father’s, mother’s” (possessive adjectives)
- перший, другий, третій “first, second, third”
- зроблений “done” (passive perfective participial adjective)
- роблений “being done” (passive imperfective participial adjective)
- роблячий “doing” (present participial adjective - it is considered ungrammatical but still used occasionally, which is why it is encoded)
- зробивший “having done” (past participial adjective - it is considered ungrammatical but still used occasionally, which is why it is encoded)
ADP: adposition
Definition
Ukrainian has only prepositions but no postpositions or circumpositions. They occur before a complement noun phrase (noun, pronoun) and they form a single structure with the complement to express its grammatical and semantic relation to another unit within a clause.
Some prepositions take the form of fixed multiword expressions, e.g. на відміну від “in contrast to”, у зв’язку з
“in connection with”. The component words are then still tagged according to their basic use (на is ADP, відміну is NOUN, etc.) and their status as multiword expressions are accounted for in the syntactic annotation.
Examples
- в “in, at”
- до “to”
- протягом “during”
ADV: adverb
Definition
Adverbs are words that typically modify verbs for such categories as time, place, direction or manner. They may also modify adjectives and other adverbs, as in дуже важливо “very significantly” or явно неправильний “provably wrong”.
There is a closed subclass of pronominal adverbs that refer to circumstances in context, rather than naming them directly; similarly
to pronouns, these can be categorized as interrogative, relative, demonstrative etc. Pronominal adverbs also get the ADV
part-of-speech tag but they are differentiated by additional features.
Examples
- дуже “very”
- добре “well”
- точно “exactly”
- завтра “tomorrow”
- вгору, вниз “up, down”
- ordinal numeral adverbs: вперше, вдруге, втретє “for the first time, for the second time, for the third time”
- multiplicative numeral adverbs: двічі, тричі “twice, three times”
- interrogative adverbs: де, куди, коли, як, чому “where, where to, when, how, why”
- demonstrative adverbs: тут, там, зараз, тоді, так “here, there, now, then, so”
- indefinite adverbs: десь, кудись, іноді, якось “somewhere, to somewhere, sometime, somehow”
- total adverbs: всюди, завжди “everywhere, always”
- negative adverbs: ніде, ніколи “nowhere, never”
AUX: auxiliary verb
Definition
The only auxiliary verb in Ukrainian is бути “to be”. It accompanies the lexical verb of a verb phrase and expresses grammatical distinctions not carried by the lexical verb.
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
- і, й, та “and”
- або “or”
- але “but”
DET: determiner
Definition
Determiners are words that modify nouns or noun phrases and express the reference of the noun phrase in context. That is, a determiner may indicate whether the noun is referring to a definite or indefinite element of a class, to a closer or more distant element, to an element belonging to a specified person or thing, to a particular number or quantity, etc.
An important point to note is that the traditional grammar of Ukrainian does not define determiners as a separate word class. Ukrainian does not have articles. Most determiners are traditionally called pronouns; that is, an UD-conformant annotation of Ukrainian must distinguish between substantive pronouns (UD tag PRON) and attributive pronouns (UD tag DET).
Examples
- possessive determiners: мій, твій, його, її, наш, ваш, їх “my, your, his, her, our, your, their”
- reflexive possessive determiner: свій “one’s own”
- demonstrative determiners: той, цей as in Цю машину я бачила вчора. “I saw this car yesterday.”
- interrogative determiners: котрий as in Котра машина тобі подобається? “Which car do you like?”
- relative determiners: котрий as in Мені цікаво, котра машина тобі подобається. “I wonder which car you like.”
- relative possessive determiner: чий “whose”
- indefinite determiners: деякий, якийсь
- total determiners: кожен, всякий
- negative determiners: жоден, ніякий as in Ми не маємо жодної машини. “We have no cars available.”
References
INTJ: interjection
Definition
An interjection is a word that is used most often as an exclamation or part of an exclamation. It typically expresses an emotional reaction, is not syntactically related to other accompanying expressions, and may include a combination of sounds not otherwise found in the language.
Examples
(Note that no direct translation of interjections is possible. The approximate translations below are for orientation purposes and they cannot serve to judge the part of speech from the English perspective.)
- ах “oh”
- бум
- ну “well”
- ба “look”
- браво “bravo”
NOUN: noun
Definition
The NOUN tag is intended for common nouns only. See PROPN for
proper nouns and PRON for pronouns.
Ukrainian nouns have the lexical feature uk-feat/Gender. Furthermore, the nouns inflect for uk-feat/Number and uk-feat/Case.
A verbal noun can be derived productively from almost every verb
(e.g. читати “to read” → читання “reading”).
While in other languages a corresponding form may be called gerund and tagged VERB,
in Ukrainian it is tagged NOUN. It has always the neuter gender and the full
number-case inflectional paradigm.
Examples
- дівчинка “girl”
- кіт “cat”
- дерево “tree”
- повітря “air”
- краса “beauty”
- плавання “swimming”
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.
Note that cardinal numerals are covered by NUM whether they are used as determiners or not (as in Windows 7) and whether they are expressed as words (чотири), digits (4) or Roman numerals (IV).
Ukrainian grammar distinguishes several subclasses of pronominal numerals (quantifiers):
interrogative and relative (скільки “how many”);
demonstrative (стільки “this many”);
indefinite (кілька, багато, мало “several, many, few”).
These words behave similarly to (most) cardinal numbers, e.g. they require that the counted noun phrase be in genitive and have different forms depending on the case (with the exception of мало “little, few”. They are not similar to adjectives (unlike their English counterparts). However, in accord with the UD standard, they should be tagged DET, not NUM.
In addition, several types of (non-pronominal) numerals, such as ordinal numerals and multiplicative numerals, are tagged ADJ or ADV, based on their syntactic and morphological behavior.
Examples
- 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 2014, 1000000, 3.14159265359
- I, II, III, IV, V, MMXIV
- один, два, три, чотири, п’ять, сімдесят “one, two, three, four, five, seventy”
- половина, третина, четвертина (чверть) “one-half, one third, quarter”: denominators of fractions constitute a separate class of cardinal numerals. (They are not considered numerals in the Ukrainian grammar. They are tagged NOUN.)
- четверо, п’ятеро “four, five” (These are special forms, so-called generic numerals.)
- одні, двоє, троє “one set of, two sets of, three sets of”
Counterexamples
- перший, другий, третій “first, second, third”: adjectival ordinal numerals. They are tagged ADJ, and the uk-feat/NumType feature reveals their semantic relation to numbers.
- вперше, вдруге, втретє “for the first time, for the second time, for the third time”: adverbial ordinal numerals. They are tagged ADV, and the uk-feat/NumType feature reveals their semantic relation to numbers.
- двічі, тричі “twice, three times”: multiplicative numerals. They are tagged ADV, and the uk-feat/NumType feature reveals their semantic relation to numbers.
- двійня, дует, трійня, тріо, квартет “pair, triplet, foursome”: n-tuples (n-tice) are not considered numerals in the Ukrainian grammar. They are tagged NOUN.
- одиниця, двійка, трійка, четвірка, п’ятірка “number one, number two, number three, number four, number five”: names of numbers, or of objects identified by the number (e.g. of a bus route). They are not considered numerals and they are tagged NOUN.
- тисяча, мільйон, мільярд, трильйон “thousand, million, billion, trillion”: words for large quantities are ambiguous between cardinal numerals (tagged
NUM) and nouns. If they inflect as nouns, they are tagged NOUN; but the borderline is fuzzy. For instance, in phrases like тисячі людей взяли участь в демонстації (“thousands of people demonstrated in the streets”), тисячі is a noun. In numeric expressions, e.g. 132 тисячі доларів (“132 thousand dollars”), it is a cardinal numeral.
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, or subordinating conjunctions). Particles may encode grammatical categories such as negation, mood etc. Ukrainian particles are not inflected.
Note that response words such as так “yes”, ні “no”, etc. are considered particles in grammars of Ukrainian but they are tagged as interjections under the UD standard. Also note that ні can be used in two ways, one would be translated as English “no” and the other as “nor”. Only the former should become interjection, while the latter will stay a conjunction.
Examples
- Sentence modality: но, хай, нехай (“May you have an enjoyable stay!”)
- тільки “just, only”
- аж “only, as late as, even, up to”
PRON: pronoun
Definition
Pronouns are words that substitute for nouns or noun phrases, whose meaning is recoverable from the linguistic or extralinguistic context.
Pronouns under this definition function like nouns. Note that Ukrainian grammar traditionally extends the term pronoun to words that
substitute for adjectives. Such words are not tagged PRON under our universal scheme. They are tagged as determiners in order to annotate the same thing same way across languages.
For instance, tohle “this” is traditionally called pronoun in Czech grammar, regardless of context (the notion of determiners does not exist in Ukrainian grammar). To make the annotation parallel across languages, it is now tagged PRON in Це я бачила вчора. “I saw this yesterday.” and DET in Це дерево я бачила вчора. _ “I saw this tree yesterday.”
Examples
- personal pronouns: я, ти, він, вона, воно, ми, ви, вони “I, you, he, she, it, we, you, they, they”
- reflexive pronouns: себе, се, собі, собою “oneself”
- demonstrative pronouns: це as in Це я бачила вчора. “I saw this yesterday.”
- interrogative pronouns: хто, що “who, what” as in Що ти думаєш? “What do you think?”
- relative pronouns: хто, що “who, what” as in Мене цікавить, що ти думаєш. “I wonder what you think.”
- indefinite pronouns: дехто, дещо “somebody, something”
- total pronouns: кожен, всі “everybody, all”
- negative pronouns: ніхто, ніщо “nobody, nothing”
References
PROPN: proper noun
Definition
A proper noun is a noun that is the name of a specific individual, place, or object. Ukrainian proper nouns are always written starting with an uppercase letter. Note that names of days of week, names of months, names of languages, and adjectives derived from geographical names are not written capitalized (unlike in English) and are not considered proper nouns.
Single-word named entities should be tagged PROPN even if they originate from a common noun (Заєць, Бук) or an adjective (Довгополий, Масна). Even if they were originally adjectives and inflect according to adjectival paradigms, they behave syntactically as nouns. For instance, Масна (the feminine version of surname Масний ) is originally feminine form of the adjective масний “fatty” but as an anthroponimic name, it is a noun. It denotes a concrete person (rather than a property of somebody/something) and its gender is limited to feminine and masculine (while adjectives have forms in all three genders).
Personal names are typically treated as a sequence of proper nouns (one or more given names and one or more surnames). If the name contains prepositions, conjunctions or particles (foreign names), these are tagged as ADP, CONJ and DET, respectively.
Ukrainian (and other Slavic) multi-word named entities have internal syntactic structure, which is preserved in the annotation. The headword is always noun and there may be other nouns involved. They will be tagged either PROPN or NOUN and possible ambiguities must be resolved individually. Modifying adjectives are never tagged PROPN. Even if an adjective is the first word of a multi-word name, and thus it starts with an uppercase letter, it is still tagged ADJ. Similarly, function words in named entities retain their normal tags. These rules are less strict for foreign named entities where the original part of speech is hidden for a Ukrainian speaker.
Examples
- Франкфурт
PROPNнаADPМайніPROPNis a city. Франкфурт is the head and the на Майні part refers to the river flowing through the city, to distinguish it from other Frankfurts. - Організація
NOUNоб’єднанихADJнаційNOUN“United Nations Organization” consists of three words, none of which is proper noun. However, the acronym ООН “UN” is a single-token name and is taggedPROPN.
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.
For coordinating conjunctions, see CONJ.
Examples
- що “that”
- щоб, аби “so that”
- якщо “if”
- як “as”
- ніж “than”
References
- Loos, Eugene E., et al. 2003. Glossary of linguistic terms: What is a subordinating conjunction?
- Wikipedia
SYM: symbol
Definition
A symbol is a word-like entity that differs from ordinary words by form, function, or both.
Many symbols are or contain special non-alphanumeric characters, similarly to punctuation. What makes them different from punctuation is that they can be substituted by normal words. This involves all currency symbols, e.g. $ 75 is identical to seventy-five dollars.
Mathematical operators form another group of symbols.
Another group of symbols is emoticons and emoji.
Strings that consists entirely of alphanumeric characters are not symbols but they may be proper nouns: 130XE, DC10; others may be tagged PROPN (rather than SYM) even if they contain special characters: DC-10.
Similarly, abbreviations for single words are not symbols but are assigned the part of speech of the full form. For example, п. (пан or пані), кг (кілограм), км (кілометр), проф. (професор) should be tagged nouns. Acronyms for proper names such as OSN and NATO should be tagged as proper nouns.
Characters used as bullets in itemized lists (•, ‣) are not symbols, they are punctuation.
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.
Note that the VERB tag covers main verbs (content verbs) and modal verbs but it does not cover auxiliary verbs, for which there is the AUX tag. (Ukrainian modal verbs are not considered auxiliary.) See the description of AUX for more information on the borderline between VERB and AUX.
Ukrainian verbs can take the following morphological forms:
- Infinitive (this is the citation form)
- Finite verb (indicative and imperative forms; conditional is constructed periphrastically). Ukrainian future tense can be formed either analitically, with the help of the auxiliary verb бути “to be” or syntactically, with the help of endings rooted in the auxiliary verb мати “to have”.
- Active and passive adverbial participle
- Impersonal form ending with -но/-то. In Slavic languages other than Ukrainian and Polish this form coincides with the neutral passive adjectival participle, but in those two languages the participle has a different ending: -не in Ukrainian and -ne in Polish, which is why it is treated as a separate verbal form.
There are participial forms that are tagged as adjectives (ADJ) rather than verbs. See below for border cases.
A verbal noun can be derived productively from almost every verb (e.g. робити “to do” → робіння “doing”). While in other languages a corresponding form may be called gerund and tagged VERB, in Ukrainian it is tagged NOUN. It has always the neuter uk-feat/Gender and it inflects for uk-feat/Number and uk-feat/Case.
Examples
- нести “to carry”
- несу, несеш, несе, несемо, несете, несуть “I carry, you carry, he/she/it carries, we carry, you carry, they carry”
- неси, несімо, несіть “carry” (imperative in different persons and numbers)
- ніс, несла, несло, несли “carried” (past tense forms in different genders and numbers)
- несено “(it was/somebody) carried” (passive impersonal form)
- несучи, нісши “carrying” (present and past adverbial participles)
Border cases
Passive and active adjectival participles are non-finite verb forms that share properties of verbs and adjectives. - Passive adjectival participle is used to construct passive voice: несений, несена, несене, несені “carried” (passive participle in different genders and numbers). It is also used separately as an adjective: ношений, драний “carried, torn/ragged”. Their meaning is almost identical but the usage slightly varies. Both groups can be used in nominal predication with copula. Only true participles (verbs) can be used to form the passive voice (but it may be sometimes difficult to distinguish from copula constructions, see AUX). On the other hand, the participial adjectives inflect for case and thus can modify nouns. - Active participle (it is considered ungrammatical but still used occasionally, which is why it is encoded): несучий, несуча, несуче, несучі “carrying” (present adjectival participle in different genders and numbers).
X: other
Definition
The tag X is used for words that for some reason cannot be assigned a real part-of-speech category.
A special usage of X is 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).
Even if foreign words are tagged X, this usage does not extend to ordinary loan words which should be assigned a normal
part-of-speech. For example, кілт “kilt” is an ordinary NOUN.
Examples
- А він тільки xfgh pdl jklw “And he just xfgh pdl jklw”