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This page pertains to UD version 2.

Universal POS tags

These tags mark the core part-of-speech categories. To distinguish additional lexical and grammatical properties of words, use the universal features.

Open class words Closed class words Other
ADJ ADP PUNCT
ADV AUX SYM
INTJ CCONJ 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:

The oldest French bridge

They may also function as predicates, as in:

The car is green.

Some words that could be seen as adjectives (and are tagged as such in other annotation schemes) have a different tag in UD: See DET for determiners and NUM for (cardinal) numbers.

ADJ is also used for “proper adjectives” such as European (“proper” as in proper nouns, i.e., words that are derived from names but are adjectives rather than nouns).

Numbers vs. Adjectives: In general, cardinal numbers receive the part of speech NUM, while ordinal numbers (more precisely adjectival ordinal numerals) receive the tag ADJ.

There are words that may traditionally be called numerals in some languages (e.g., Czech) but which are treated as adjectives in our universal tagging scheme. In particular, the adjectival ordinal numerals (note: Czech also has adverbial ones) behave both morphologically and syntactically as adjectives and are tagged ADJ.

Nouns vs. Adjectives: A noun modifying another noun to form a compound noun is given the tag NOUN not ADJ. On the other hand, adjectives that exceptionally head a nominal phrase (as in the sick, the healthy) are still tagged ADJ.

Participles: Participles are word forms that may share properties and usage of any of adjectives, nouns, and verbs. Depending on the language and context, they may be classified as any of ADJ, NOUN or VERB.

Adjectival modifiers of adjectives: In general, an ADJ is modified by an ADV (very strong). However, sometimes a word modifying an ADJ is still regarded as an ADJ. These cases include: (i) ordinal numeral modifiers of a superlative adjective (the third oldest bridge) and (ii) when a pair of adjectives form a compound adjectival modifier (an African American mayor).

Examples

References

edit ADJ

ADP: adposition

Definition

Adposition is a cover term for prepositions and postpositions. Adpositions belong to a closed set of items that occur before (preposition) or after (postposition) a complement composed of a noun phrase, noun, pronoun, or clause that functions as a noun phrase, and that form a single structure with the complement to express its grammatical and semantic relation to another unit within a clause.

In many languages, adpositions can take the form of fixed multiword expressions, such as in spite of, because of, thanks to. The component words are then still tagged according to their basic use (in is ADP, spite is NOUN, etc.) and their status as multiword expressions are accounted for in the syntactic annotation.

Note that in Germanic languages, some prepositions may also function as verbal particles, as in give in or hold on. They are still tagged ADP and not PART.

A common pathway of grammaticalization is from verbs to adpositions. Along this pathway of grammaticalization, it is common to have words with roughly their original verbal meaning and belonging to the inflectional paradigm of an extant verb with suitable verbal morphology but functioning in a sentence as a preposition, with certain syntactic tests or finer-grained semantic criteria suggesting that they are prepositions (for example, they have no understood subject). These words have variously been called deverbal prepositions, deverbal connectives, quasi-prepositions, or pseudo-prepositions. In English this includes words like following, concerning, regarding, and given. Similar cases occur in many other languages (such as French concernant and suivant). For UD, we have decided that such words will be given the POS VERB and normal verbal morphological features, but they can be recognized as syntactically adpositions by giving them the grammatical relation case or mark. Conversely, in cases where there is no longer an extant verb or any still existent verb has a quite different meaning, grammaticalization is viewed as complete and the POS should be ADP. In English this would apply to pending or during (from the disused verb dure: “The wood being preserv’d dry will dure a very long time” – Evelyn 1664).

Examples

References

edit ADP

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 very briefly or arguably 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.

Note that in Germanic languages, some adverbs may also function as verbal particles, as in write down or end up. They are still tagged ADV and not PART.

Note that there are words that may be traditionally called numerals in some languages (e.g. Czech) but they are treated as adverbs in our universal tagging scheme. In particular, adverbial ordinal numerals ([cs] poprvé “for the first time”) and multiplicative numerals (e.g. once, twice) behave syntactically as adverbs and are tagged ADV.

Note that there are verb forms such as transgressives or adverbial participles that share properties and usage of adverbs and verbs. Depending on language and context, they may be classified as either VERB or ADV.

Examples

References

edit ADV

AUX: auxiliary

Definition

An auxiliary is a function word 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, voice or evidentiality. It is often a verb (which may have non-auxiliary uses as well) but many languages have nonverbal TAMVE markers and these should also be tagged AUX. The class AUX also include copulas (in the narrow sense of pure linking words for nonverbal predication).

Less commonly, an auxiliary may just cross-reference person and number of a core argument, without also expressing any TAMVE (tense, aspect, mood, voice, evidentiality) feature. This only applies if the auxiliary is spelled as a separate word; if it is written together with the verbal stem, annotate the cross-reference (agreement) features on the verb and do not attempt to cut the agreement morpheme as a separate syntactic word. Even if written separately, the default approach is to treat such words as personal pronouns (PRON). But if there are strong arguments against a pronoun analysis, it is possible to use AUX instead. Issue #782 discusses examples from K’iche’ [quc].

Modal verbs may count as auxiliaries in some languages (English). In other languages their behavior is not too different from the main verbs and they are thus tagged VERB.

Note that not all languages have grammaticalized auxiliaries, and even where they exist the dividing line between full verbs and auxiliaries can be expected to vary between languages. Exactly which words are counted as AUX should be part of the language-specific documentation.

Examples

References

edit AUX

CCONJ: 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

References

edit CCONJ

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.

Determiners under this definition include both articles and pro-adjectives (pronominal adjectives), which is a slightly broader sense than what is usually regarded as determiners in English. In particular, there is no general requirement that a nominal can be modified by at most one determiner, although some languages may show a strong tendency towards such a constraint. (For example, an English nominal usually allows only one DET modifier, but there are occasional cases of addeterminers, which appear outside the usual determiner, such as [en] all in all the children survived. In such cases, both all and the are given the POS DET.)

Note that the DET tag includes (pronominal) quantifiers (words like many, few, several), which are included among determiners in traditional grammars of some languages but may belong to numerals in others. However, cardinal numerals in the narrow sense (one, five, hundred) are not tagged DET even though some authors would include them in quantifiers. Cardinal numbers have their own tag NUM.

Also note that the notion of determiners is unknown in traditional grammar of some languages (e.g. Czech); words equivalent to English determiners may be traditionally classified as pronouns and/or numerals in these languages. In order to annotate the same thing the same way across languages, the words satisfying our definition of determiners should be tagged DET in these languages as well.

It is not always crystal clear where pronouns end and determiners start. Unlike in UD v1 it is no longer required that they are told apart solely on the base of the context. The words can be pre-classified in the dictionary as either PRON or DET, based on their typical syntactic distribution (and morphology, when applicable). Language-specific documentation should list all determiners (it is a closed class) and point out ambiguities, if any.

See also general principles on pronominal words for more tips on how to define determiners. In particular:

Examples

References

edit DET

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.

In keeping with the general tagging principles, a word used to signal an exclamation in a particular context does not automatically qualify as INTJ. For example, nouns and adjectives with emotionally valenced semantics should only be tagged INTJ in exclamations if such usage is considered to be lexicalized as a separate sense.

As a special case of interjections, we recognize feedback particles such as yes, no, uhuh, etc.

Examples

References

edit INTJ

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.

Note that some verb forms such as gerunds and infinitives may share properties and usage of nouns and verbs. Depending on language and context, they may be classified as either VERB or NOUN.

Examples

References

edit NOUN

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 Seven) and whether they are expressed as words (four), digits (4) or Roman numerals (IV). Other words functioning as determiners (including quantifiers such as many and few) are tagged DET.

Note that there are words that may be traditionally called numerals in some languages (e.g. Czech) but which are not tagged NUM. Such non-cardinal numerals belong to other parts of speech in our universal tagging scheme, based mainly on syntactic criteria: ordinal numerals are adjectives (first, second, third) or adverbs ([cs] poprvé “for the first time”), multiplicative numerals are adverbs (once, twice) etc.

Word tokens consisting of digits and (optionally) punctuation characters are generally considered cardinal numbers and tagged as NUM. This includes numeric date/time formats (11:00) and phone numbers. Words mixing digits and alphabetic characters should, however, ordinarily be excluded. In English, for example, pluralized numbers (the 1970s, the seventies) are treated as plural NOUNs, while mixed alphanumeric street addresses (221B) and product names (130XE) are PROPN.

Related features: NumForm, NumType

Examples

References

edit NUM

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). Particles may encode grammatical categories such as negation. Particles are normally not inflected, although exceptions may occur.

Note that the PART tag does not cover so-called verbal particles in Germanic languages, as in give in or end up. These are adpositions or adverbs by origin and are tagged accordingly ADP or ADV. Separable verb prefixes in German are treated analogically.

Note that not all function words that are traditionally called particles in Japanese automatically qualify for the PART tag. Some of them do, e.g. the question particle か / ka. Others (e.g. に / ni, の / no) are parallel to adpositions in other languages and should thus be tagged ADP.

In general, the PART tag should be used restrictively and only when no other tag is possible. The language-specific documentation should list the words classified as PART in the given language.

Examples

References

edit PART

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 some languages traditionally extend 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 the same way across languages.

It is not always crystal clear where pronouns end and determiners start. Unlike in UD v1 it is no longer required that they are told apart solely on the base of the context. The words can be pre-classified in the dictionary as either PRON or DET, based on their typical syntactic distribution (and morphology, when applicable). Language-specific documentation should list all pronouns (it is a closed class) and point out ambiguities, if any.

See also general principles on pronominal words for more tips on how to define pronouns. In particular:

Examples

References

edit PRON

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.

Note that PROPN is only used for the subclass of nouns that are used as names and that often exhibit special syntactic properties (such as occurring without an article in the singular in English). When other phrases or sentences are used as names, the component words retain their original tags. For example, in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Cat is NOUN, on is ADP, a is DET, etc.

A fine point is that it is not uncommon to regard words that are etymologically adjectives or participles as proper nouns when they appear as part of a multiword name that overall functions like a proper noun, for example in the Yellow Pages, United Airlines or Thrall Manufacturing Company. This is certainly the practice for the English Penn Treebank tag set. However, the practice should not be copied from English to other languages if it is not linguistically justified there. For example, in Czech, Spojené státy “United States” is an adjective followed by a common noun; their tags in UD are ADJ NOUN and the adjective modifies the noun via the amod relation.

Acronyms of proper nouns, such as UN and NATO, should be tagged PROPN. Even if they contain numbers (as in various product names), they are tagged PROPN and not SYM: 130XE, DC10, DC-10. However, if the token consists entirely of digits (like 7 in Windows 7), it is tagged NUM.

Examples

References

edit PROPN

PUNCT: punctuation

Definition

Punctuation marks are non-alphabetical characters and character groups used in many languages to delimit linguistic units in printed text.

Punctuation is not taken to include logograms such as $, %, and §, which are instead tagged as SYM. (Hint: if it corresponds to a word that you pronounce, such as dollar or percent, it is SYM and not PUNCT.)

Spoken corpora contain symbols representing pauses, laughter and other sounds; we treat them as punctuation, too. In these cases it is even not required that all characters of the token are non-alphabetical. One can represent a pause using a special character such as #, or using some more descriptive coding such as [:pause].

Examples

References

edit PUNCT

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 follow Loos et al. 2003 in recognizing these three subclasses as subordinating conjunctions:

For coordinating conjunctions, see CCONJ.

Examples

References

edit SCONJ

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, Mr. (mister), kg (kilogram), km (kilometer), Dr (Doctor) should be tagged nouns. Acronyms for proper names such as UN and NATO should be tagged as proper nouns.

Characters used as bullets in itemized lists (•, ‣) are not symbols, they are punctuation.

Examples

edit SYM

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. Verbs are often associated with grammatical categories like tense, mood, aspect and voice, which can either be expressed inflectionally or using auxilliary verbs or particles.

Note that the VERB tag covers main verbs (content verbs) but it does not cover auxiliary verbs and verbal copulas (in the narrow sense), for which there is the AUX tag. Modal verbs may be considered VERB or AUX, depending on their behavior in the given language. Language-specific documentation should specify which verbs are tagged AUX in which contexts.

Note that participles are word forms that may share properties and usage of adjectives and verbs. Depending on language and context, they may be classified as either VERB or ADJ.

Note that some verb forms such as gerunds and infinitives may share properties and usage of nouns and verbs. Depending on language and context, they may be classified as either VERB or NOUN.

Note that there are verb forms such as converbs (transgressives) or adverbial participles that share properties and usage of adverbs and verbs. Depending on language and context, they may be classified as either VERB or ADV.

Deverbal connectives acting as adpositions or subordinators may be tagged VERB while participating in a case or mark relation: see ADP.

Examples

References

edit VERB

X: other

Definition

The tag X is used for words that for some reason cannot be assigned a real part-of-speech category. It should be used very restrictively. Cases include:

X is discouraged for words that clearly belong to the language, even if they are idiosyncratic in form or distribution and thus do not neatly fit into other syntactic categories. For example, etc. in English is not an obvious fit for any category, but a regular category (NOUN) was deemed the closest fit. In other cases, one of the other non-canonical parts of speech (PART, NUM, SYM, and PUNCT) may be suitable.

Examples

edit X