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 Norwegian, adjectives agree with their head in gender, number and definiteness: stort hus “big house”, store hus “big houses”, det store huset “the big house”.
Examples
- stor “big”
- gammel “old”
- grønn “green”
ADP: adposition
Definition
Adposition is a cover term for prepositions and postpositions, Norwegian has prepositions and not postpositions.
Some prepositions may function as verb particles, as in slå opp “look up”, gå inn “go inside”, but these are still analyzed as ADP.
Examples
- i “in”
- på “on”
- utenfor “outside”
ADV: adverb
Definition
Adverbs are words that typically modify adjectives, verbs or other adverbs for such categories as time, place, direction or manner.
Examples
- Han kom nettopp “He just arrived”
- Derfor kom han “Therefore, he came”
- nesten ferdig “almost finished”
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.
Auxiliaries in Norwegian include temporal, passive and modal auxiliaries (see below). Note that some modals can occur without a main verb (skal hjem lit. shall home “will go home”) and will then be annotated as VERB.
Examples
- temporal: ha “have” (har spist “has eaten”), være “be” (er kommet “has come”)
- passive: bli “become” (blir spist “is eaten”)
- modal: kunne “can”, skulle “should”, ville “will”, måtte “must”, burde “should” (kan/skal/vil/må/bør spise “can/should/will/must/should eat”)
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
- og “and”
- eller “or”
- men “but”
DET: determiner
Definition
Determiners are words that modify nouns or noun phrases and express the reference of the noun phrase in context. In Norwegian, most determiners agree with the nominal head in terms of gender and number, e.g. min bil “my car”, mitt barn “my child”, mine barn “my children”. We distinguish three main types of determiners: possessive, demonstrative and quantifying.
Possessive
Possessive determiners agree in gender and number with the noun the modify, their form varies depending on person. In Norwegian, possessive determiners usually precede their head noun, but may occur after the head noun when the noun is in the definite form, e.g. bilen hans “his car” * mitt barn “my child” * våre barn “our children” * barnet vårt “our child”
Demonstrative
Demonstrative determiners agree in gender and number with the noun the modify. This group of determiners include the interrogative hvilken “which”. The demonstratives may only precede the noun they modify.
- dette barnet “this child”, det barnet “that child”, den bilen“that car”
- (det) samme barnet “(the) same child”, (det) andre barnet “(the) other child”
- hvilken bil “which car”, hvilket hus “which house”
Quantifying
The quantifying pronouns are a heterogenous group of determiners which all occur before the noun they modify. Some of these agree with their nominal head (like articles and indefinite determiners) and some do not.
- en bil “a car”, et barn “a child”, ei jente “a girl”
- noen biler “some cars”
- alle biler “all cars”
- begge bilene “both cars”
References
Jan Terje Faarlund, Svein Lie and Kjell Ivar Vannebo. 1997. “Norsk referansegrammatikk”. Universitetsforlaget, Oslo, Norway.
INTJ: interjection
Definition
An interjection is a word that is used most often as an exclamation or part of an exclamation.
Examples
- ja “yes”, nei, “no”
- hei “hi”, hallo “hello”, heisan “hi there”
- å “oh”
- ok “okay”
- piip “peep”
NOUN: noun
Definition
Nouns are a part of speech typically denoting a person, place, thing, animal or idea. The NOUN tag is used only for common nouns, see PROPN for proper nouns.
In Norwegian, nouns inflect for definiteness (bil-bilen) and usually also for number (bil - biler).
Examples
- jente “girl”
- katt “cat”
- tre “tree”
- luft “air”
- skjønnhet “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.
Examples
- 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 2014, 1000000, 3.14159265359
- tre “three”, femtito “fifty-two”, fire-fem “four-five”, tusen “thousand”
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.
For Norwegian, PART is used only for the infinitival marker å “to”.
Examples
- Han liker å spise is “He likes to eat icecream”
PRON: pronoun
Definition
Pronouns are words that substitute for nouns or noun phrases, whose meaning is recoverable from the linguistic or extralinguistic context.
In Norwegian, the personal pronouns are the only words that inflect for case (nominative/accusative).
The relativizer som “that” is counted as a relative pronoun even though there are linguistic reasons to treat it as a subordinating conjunction (SCONJ). This is done in order to preserve information about the function of the antecedent in the syntactic analysis. Note that som “that” may also function as a preposition and will then receive the ADP tag (fortsette som leder “continue as leader”).
Examples
- personal: han “he”, hun “she”, det “it”, ham “him”, henne “her”
- demonstrative: dette “this”
- reflexive: seg “self”
- reciprocal: hverandre “eachother”
- interrogative: hvem “who”, hva “what”, hvilken “which”
- totality: alle “all”
- indefinite: noen “some”
- relative: som “that”
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.
In Norwegian, proper nouns do usually not inflect for morphological properties like gender, number, etc. Proper nouns are furthermore written with a capital letter.
Examples
- Kari, Ola
- Oslo, Bergen
PUNCT: punctuation
Definition
Punctuation marks are non-alphabetical characters and character groups used in many languages to delimit linguistic units in printed text.
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.
Examples
- Complementizers: at “that”, om “if/whether”
- Adverbial clause introducers: når “when”, siden “since”, fordi “because”
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.
Examples
-
/, * * - *
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 copulas but it does not cover auxiliary verbs, for which there is the AUX tag.
In Norwegian, modal verbs occurring alone, as in skal hjem lit. shall home “will go home” are tagged as VERB, but otherwise they will be AUX. Participles are annotated as verbs when they occur with auxiliaries ha “have”, få “get” or a modal auxiliary. When the participle occurs with the copula or bli “become” or follows a head noun, the participle may be either adjective or verb (for syntactic tests to determine these cases, see Kinn et. al.).
Examples
- løpe “run”, løper “runs”, løp “ran”, (har) løpt “(has) run”
- spise “eat”, spiser “eats”, spiste “ate”, (har) spist “(has) eaten”
References
Kari Kinn, Per Erik Solberg and Pål Kristian Eriksen. “NDT Guidelines for Morphological Annotation”. National Library Tech Report.
X: other
Definition
The tag X is used for words that for some reason cannot be assigned a real part-of-speech category. In the Norwegian data, this tag is used mostly for foreign words.