This is part of archived UD v1 documentation. See http://universaldependencies.org/ for the current version.
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Features

Lexical features
PronType
NumType
Poss
Reflex
Inflectional features
Nominal Verbal
Gender VerbForm
Animacy Mood
Number Tense
Case Aspect
Definite Voice
Degree Person
Negative

Aspect: aspect

Description

Aspect is typically a feature of verbs. It may also occur with other parts of speech (nouns, adjectives, adverbs), depending on whether borderline word forms such as gerunds and participles are classified as verbs or as the other category. Uralic verbs have mainly suffixes in tense-mood axis, but some may also be annotated in Aspect category.

Examples

None in Finnish.

edit Aspect

Case: case

Case is usually an inflectional feature of nouns, and, in many Uralic languages, adjectives, pronouns, and numerals, some adpositions and adverbs, and non-finite forms of verbs. The case feature typically matches case suffixes. Some cases can be considered derivational, creating a new lexeme rather than part of the original lexical features, this is often case with marginal semantic cases that are not part of lexical constructions. Uralic languages have rich case systems and there are few dozens of values that can be used, it is advisable to try and match an existing value before documenting a new one.

The values can be roughly separated into grammatical (Nom, Acc, Dat) and semantic. Semantic cases are typically derived of proto-Uralic directional case systems (to, on, from, and later: inner, outer and surficial, etc.), but are different between Uralic languages. Marginal cases are sometimes considered as derivational suffixes instead.

The case systems of Uralic languages vary a lot, a care should be taken in using correct values mapping between different languages. For example, Hungarian has full nominative-accusative-dative grammatical case system, whereas Finnish has genitive and partitive standing in for object cases and no dative; Hungarian has a 9 locative case system whereas Finnish has 6 and North Sámi 4. It is not always easy to map between them using descriptions here as only guideline.

Distinguishing between marginal cases and derivations have to be done on a case by case basis. Potential evidence against Case feature includes: no phonological evidence (e.g. lack of vowel harmony indicates a postpositional enclitic / compound), no syntactic evidence (e.g. lack of case agreement in noun phrases) and limited productivity.

Nom: Nominative

Nominative is typically an unmarked base form, the form of subject’s in basic clauses, often also the dictionary form and lemma form of the word.

Nominative examples

Acc: Accusative

Accusative is typically the form of direct object, but not necessarily solely. For example, in Finnish the direct object is mainly seen in genitive Gen and partitive Par forms instead (because of language history).

Accusative examples

Dat: Dative

Dative is typically a form for indirect object, though many other (semantic) cases are used in constructions that are considered indirect objects in some of the grammars.

Dative examples

None in Finnish.

Par: Partitive

Partitive is used for various tasks, including object case, indefinite semantics etc.

Partitive examples

Gen: Genitive

Genitive is typically used to form owning construction. In Finnish, genitive is used for many grammatical constructions, such as necessive subject, direct object, and so forth. Historically Finnish may have had an accusative suffix of -m whereas genitive suffix is -n, that have been merged, however, this distinction is not made in Universal Dependencies analysis (there should be a guideline saying that historical analyses are to be avoided).

Genitive examples

Ine: Inessive case

Inessive is case for “being inside”. It is a part of the Uralic extended locative case system.

Inessive examples

Ela: Elative case

Elative is case for “moving out from inside”. It is a part of the Uralic extended locative case system.

Elative examples

Ill: Illative case

Illative is case for “moving into inside”. It is a part of the Uralic extended locative case system.

Illative examples

Ade: Adessive case

Adessive is case for “being outside”. It is a part of the Uralic extended locative case system.

Adessive examples

# sentence-text: Vietin eilisen päivän tosiaan sohvalla lepäillen ja jalkaani hoitaen.
1       Vietin  viettää VERB    V       Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin|Voice=Act 0       root
    _       _
2       eilisen eilinen ADJ     A       Case=Gen|Degree=Pos|Number=Sing 3       amod    _       _
3       päivän  päivä   NOUN    N       Case=Gen|Number=Sing    1       dobj    _       _
4       tosiaan tosiaan ADV     Adv     _       1       advmod  _       _
5       sohvalla        sohva   NOUN    N       Case=Ade|Number=Sing    6       nmod    _       _
6       lepäillen       lepäillä        VERB    V       Case=Ins|InfForm=2|Number=Sing|VerbForm=Inf|Voice=Act   1
       advcl   _       _
7       ja      ja      CONJ    C       _       6       cc      _       _
8       jalkaani        jalka   NOUN    N       Case=Par|Number=Sing|Number[psor]=Sing|Person[psor]=1   9       dobj
    _       _
9       hoitaen hoitaa  VERB    V       Case=Ins|InfForm=2|Number=Sing|VerbForm=Inf|Voice=Act   6       conj    1:advcl SpaceAfter=No
10      .       .       PUNCT   Punct   _       1       punct   _       _

Abl: Ablative case

Ablative is case for “moving from outside”. It is a part of the Uralic extended locative case system.

Ablative examples

All: Allative case

Allative is case for “moving to outside”. It is a part of the Uralic extended locative case system.

Allative examples

Exe: Exessive case

Exessive is a case for “unbecoming something”.

Finnish essives are treated as derivations, e.g. [fi] papinta “from a priest(‘s house)”

Exessive examples

None in Finnish

Tra: Translative case

Translative is a case for “turning into something”.

Translative examples

Abe: Abessive case

Abessive is a case for “without”.

Abessive examples

Ins: Instructive or instrumental case

Instructive is a case for “with” (as a tool, means etc.).

Many Finnish instructives are treated as adverbs, e.g. [fi] käsin “by hand, manually”.

Instructive examples

Com: Comitative or sociative case

Comitative is a case for “with” (as accompanied with, alongside).

Comitative examples

Dis: Distributive case

Distributive is a case for “each, one by one”.

Finnish distributives are treated as derivations, such as [fi] talottain “house by house”.

Distributive examples

Tem: Temporal case

Temporal is a case for “at” (for a given time).

Finnish temporal distributives are treated as derivations, such as [fi] perjantaisin “each Friday”.

Temporal examples

Cau: Causative or causal case

Causative is a case for “because of”.

Add: Additive case

Additive is an Estonian case…

Voc: Vocative case

Vocative is a case for …

Layered cases

Some Uralic languages allow stacking of case suffixes, which might be implemented in UD as layered annotations or lexicalising the inflected form.

edit Case

Definite: definiteness or state

Description

Definiteness is typically a feature of nouns, adjectives and articles. Definiteness is not an explicitly marked feature in most traditional Uralic descriptions. Many uralic languages feature few ways of expressing definiteness, such as partitive case, which is not marked using Definite feature but just a Case. Definite exists in Hungarian as a feature for indefinite and definite articles, as well as verbal suffixes.

Def: Definite

Definite is used for definite forms.

Definite examples

Ind: Indefinite

Indefinite is used for indefinite forms.

Indefinite examples

edit Definite

Degree: degree of comparison

Description

Degree of comparison is a feature of adjectives, some adverbs, and verbs in participle form. Comparative suffixes can sometimes be used with common nouns as well. Typically there are three degrees of comparison: positive or first, comparative or second and superlative or third degree. Some descriptions include exaggerative degrees, e.g. [hu] legeslegjobb “better than best”, however it is commonly treated as derivation, compounding or just separate lexemes and appears typically in very limited situations.

Pos: Positive or first degree

Positive degree is the neutral, typically unmarked form.

Positive examples

Cmp: Comparative or second degree

Comparative is used for comparison or comparable qualities.

Comparative examples

Sup: Superlative or third degree

Superlative is used for ultimate within compared group quality.

Superlative examples

edit Degree

Mood: mood

Description

Mood is a feature that expresses modality and subclassifies finite verb forms. Uralic verbs are commonly suffixed for mood, sometimes mood is intermixed with tense and/or aspect in Uralic inflectional systems.

Ind: Indicative mood

Indicative is the neutral mood, usually without overt suffix. In some dictionaries an indicative form is also the dictionary entry form, i.e., lemma or.

Indicative examples

Cnd: Conditional mood

Conditional mood is used to express actions that would have taken place under some circumstances but they actually did not / do not happen.

Conditional examples

Pot: Potential mood

Potential mood is used to express uncertainty. See also: Aspect.

Potential examples

Jus: Jussive mood

The jussive mood expresses the desire that the action happens. Some uses of other moods may overlap with jussive, for example in Finnish potential inflection set.

Jussive examples

None in Finnish

Opt: Optative mood

Optative is mood for desired actions. For example Finnish optative is used in archaic literal style for proclamations.

Optative examples

Eventive mood

The eventive mood is used in Finnish grammars of the combination of potential and conditional moods. It has mainly archaic poetic significance and does not occur in the current treabanks. If it were it might be marked as Cnd|Pot?

edit Mood

Negative: whether the word can be or is negated

Description

Negation is prominent feature in Uralic languages. The negation feature of Uralic dependencies is primarily used for the verb forms that go in negative sentences. In many cases there is a separate verb form for negative sentences that cannot be used in a context without negation, sometimes called a connegative form. This token should have feature Negative=Yes. There is no need to mark positive or affirmative forms with Negative=No feature, unless…

See also the Conneg feature, that is used in most uralic languages for the verb forms that accompany negation verb.

This is a bit messy TODO.

Neg: Negative form

Used for negation verb.

~~~ conllu # sentence-text: En alkuun ymmärtänyt kysymystä. 1 En ei VERB V Negative=Neg|Number=Sing|Person=1|VerbForm=Fin|Voice=Act 3 neg _ _ 2 alkuun alku NOUN N Case=Ill|Number=Sing 3 nmod _ _ 3 ymmärtänyt ymmärtää VERB V Case=Nom|Degree=Pos|Number=Sing|PartForm=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Act 0 root _ _ 4 kysymystä kysymys NOUN N Case=Par|Number=Sing 3 dobj _ SpaceAfter=No 5 . . PUNCT Punct _ 3 punct _ _ ~~~̃

Negative examples

Pos: Positive form

Is used for.

edit Negative

NumType: numeral type

Description

Numeral types are used for lexical sub-categorisation of numerals. Common classes include cardinals and ordinals, sometimes also approximatives etc.

Card: Cardinal

Cardinal examples

Ord: Ordinal

Sometimes ordinals are marked as adjectives in their main part of speech classification, the NumType feature should(?) be used with adjectives.

Ordinal examples

Mult: Multiplicative

Multiplicative examples

Dist: Distributive

Distributive examples

Frac: Fractional

Fractional examples

edit NumType

Number: number

Number is a feature of nouns, pronouns and numbers as well as of verbs and adjectives that mark agreement with them. Number is a common morphological feature. It is used for both number of nominals and number in verbal inflection. Number in Uralic languages can typically appear multiple times as a layered feature, e.g. in possession as number of nominals and number of possessors. For layered features, see Number[psor] and Number[psed].

Sing: Singular

A singular noun denotes one person, animal or thing.

Singular examples

Dual: Singular

A Dual noun denotes two person, animal or thing.

Dual examples

None in Finnish.

edit Number

Person: person

Description

Person is typically feature of personal and possessive pronouns / determiners, and of verbs. On verbs it is in fact an agreement feature that marks the person of the verb’s subject. Person is further used as a layered feature for possessives, for further informations, see Person[psor] and Person[psed].

1: First person

First person refers towards me, us, etc.

Examples

2: First person

Second person refers towards you, away from us but still within reference.

Examples

edit Person

Poss: possessive

Boolean feature of pronouns, determiners or adjectives, It tells whether the word is possessive. Possessive feature is not used as an annotation for Uralic possessive suffixes, see Number[psor] and Person[psor] instead. Possessive is a lexical feature in UD, not inflectional.

edit Poss

PronType: pronominal type

Description

This feature typically applies to pronouns, determiners, pronominal numerals (quantifiers) and pronominal adverbs. This feature is used for pro-words that are not under PRON part of speech, e.g. pro-adjectives and pro-adverbs.

Prs: Personal pronouns

Personal pronouns are pretty standard, most Uralic languages will have at least singulars and plurals in first, second and third person. Some will also include duals as well as inclusive and exclusive first persons.

Personal examples

Rcp: Reciprocal pronouns

Reciprocal pronouns refer to number of things each, most typically two people at each other.

Reciprocal examples

Rel: Relative pronouns

Relative pronouns are used with relative clauses.

Relative examples

Dem: Demonstrative pronouns

Demonstrative pronouns are: this, that and it, and their plurals.

Demonstrative examples

Ind: Indefinite pronouns

Pronouns that refer to indefinite quantities or qualities of nouns, in some grammars overlaps with e.g. quantifier pronouns (which do not exist in Universal features).

Indefinite examples

Art: Article pronouns

For words that are articles. Mainly used in Uralic dependencies for Hungarian, or loans from other related languages.

Article examples

None in Finnish.

Neg: Negative pronouns

Negative pronouns are lexically negative by themselves. They are not used in Universal dependencies for pronouns that go with negation, e.g. not with [fi] ei koskaan, ei mikään etc.

Negative examples

None in Finnish.

Tot: Total / collective pronouns

Total pronouns are used for some collectives.

Total examples

None in Finnish

edit PronType

Reflex: reflexive

Description

Boolean feature, typically of pronouns or determiners. It tells whether the word is reflexive, i.e. refers to the subject of its clause. This is a lexical feature in UD and should not be used for e.g. reflexive inflection of verbs that is common some Uralic languages that we haven’t annotated yet.

Yes: is reflexive

Reflexive examples

edit Reflex

Tense: tense

Description

Tense feature matches the inflectional endings in verbs. Sometimes the suffix for tense-aspect-mood can be one together, in these cases all features can be used. Tense is a feature that specifies the time when the action took / takes / will take place, in relation to the current moment or to another action in the utterance. In Uralic grammars there have been various practices in refering to present/future tense and past/preterite tense, in Universal dependencies we use Pres for common non-past and Past for common past, unless language has more complex tense system.

Pres: Present tense

Present tense is used for events happening in the current time. In many Uralic languages used in future constructions as well.

Present examples

Past: Past or preterite tense

Past tense is used for events happening in the passed time.

Present examples

edit Tense

VerbForm: form of verb or deverbative

Description

Even though the name of the feature seems to suggest that it is used exclusively with verbs, it is not the case. Some verb forms in some languages actually form a gray zone between verbs and other parts of speech (nouns, adjectives and adverbs). For instance, participles may be either classified as verbs or as adjectives, depending on language and context. In both cases VerbForm=Part may be used to separate them from other verb forms or other types of adjectives.

Uralic verbs have rich inflection / derivation pattern for for infinite forms, these are marked using VerbForm feature. However, Finnish uses additional features InfType and PartType to enumerate all the different verb forms, this needs some unifying.

Fin: Finite

Finite is used for regularly inflected verb form. Verbs that inflect for mood (Mood), tense (Tense) or person (Person) are finite and are assigned the VerbForm value Fin.

Finite examples

Inf: Infinitive

Infinitive is a form of verb most typically used in syntactic expressions, verb chains and so forth. Uralic infinitives share features of nouns, and may have case inflection for example. It is notable that Uralic languages will have more than one infinitive form often, and often one of these is the citation form for dictionaries, i.e. lemma, but it is not shared between languages: Finnish lemma is “A infintive”, Estonian “MA infinitive” and Hungarian is a finite form.

Infinitive examples

edit VerbForm

Voice: voice

Description

For most Uralic languages, voice means mainly the active-passive distinction. Voice is a main feature of verb. The Uralic impersonal are marked as passive voice and other forms as active. Infinite verb forms that are not clearly either should not have a voice feature.

Act: Active voice

The subject of the verb is the doer of the action (agent), the object is affected by the action (patient).

Active examples

~̃~~ conllu # sentence-text: Kuinka paljon ihmiset oikeasti sitten olisivat valmiita maksamaan tästä huvista? 1 Kuinka kuinka ADV Adv _ 2 advmod _ _ 2 paljon paljon ADV Adv _ 8 advmod _ _ 3 ihmiset ihminen NOUN N Case=Nom|Number=Plur 7 nsubj:cop 8:nsubj _ 4 oikeasti oikeasti ADV Adv _ 7 advmod _ _ 5 sitten sitten ADV Adv _ 7 advmod _ _ 6 olisivat olla VERB V Mood=Cnd|Number=Plur|Person=3|VerbForm=Fin|Voice=Act 7 cop _ _ 7 valmiita valmis ADJ A Case=Par|Degree=Pos|Number=Plur 0 root _ _ 8 maksamaan maksaa VERB V Case=Ill|InfForm=3|Number=Sing|VerbForm=Inf|Voice=Act 7 xcomp _ _ 9 tästä tämä PRON Pron Case=Ela|Number=Sing|PronType=Dem 10 det _ _ 10 huvista huvi NOUN N Case=Ela|Number=Sing 8 nmod _ SpaceAfter=No 11 ? ? PUNCT Punct _ 7 punct _ _ ~̃~~

Pass: Passive voice

The subject of the verb is affected by the action (patient). The doer (agent) is either unexpressed or it appears as an object of the verb.

Passive examples

~~~ conllu # sentence-text: Yahoo lupaa yhdestä ip:stä 5000 kyselyä / per päivä, mutta minut bannattiin sieltä aina 300 kyselyn jälkeen. 1 Yahoo Yahoo PROPN N Case=Nom|Number=Sing 2 nsubj _ _ 2 lupaa luvata VERB V Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin|Voice=Act 0 root _ _ 3 yhdestä yksi NUM Num Case=Ela|Number=Sing|NumType=Card 4 nummod _ _ 4 ip:stä ip NOUN N Abbr=Yes|Case=Ela|Number=Sing 6 nmod _ _ 5 5000 5000 NUM Num NumType=Card 6 nummod _ _ 6 kyselyä kysely NOUN N Case=Par|Number=Sing 2 dobj _ _ 7 / / PUNCT Punct _ 6 punct _ _ 8 per per ADP Adp AdpType=Post 9 case _ _ 9 päivä päivä NOUN N Case=Nom|Number=Sing 6 nmod _ SpaceAfter=No 10 , , PUNCT Punct _ 2 punct _ _ 11 mutta mutta CONJ C _ 2 cc _ _ 12 minut minä PRON Pron Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs 13 dobj _ _ 13 bannattiin bannata VERB V Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin|Voice=Pass 2 conj _ _ 14 sieltä sieltä ADV Adv _ 13 advmod _ _ 15 aina aina ADV Adv _ 17 advmod _ _ 16 300 300 NUM Num NumType=Card 17 nummod _ _ 17 kyselyn kysely NOUN N Case=Gen|Number=Sing 13 nmod _ _ 18 jälkeen jälkeen ADP Adp AdpType=Post 17 case _ SpaceAfter=No 19 . . PUNCT Punct _ 2 punct _ _ ~̃~~

edit Voice

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