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. Adjectives in Swedish normally agree in gender and number with the noun they modify (both in attributive and predicative position), e.g. en stor skillnad “a big difference” (common singular), ett stort problem “a big problem” (neuter singual) and stora delar “big parts” (plural).
Examples
- gammal/gammalt/gamla “old”
- grön/grönt/gröna “green”
- ofattbar/ofattbart/ofattbara “incomprehensible”
ADP: adposition
Definition
Adposition is a cover term for prepositions and postpositions.
Swedish has prepositions but not postpositions (except in a few fixed archaic phrases). In Swedish, some prepositions may also function as verb particles, as in säga till “tell” or komma åt “get at”. They are still tagged ADP and not PART.
Examples
- i “in/on”
- på “of/at”
- genom “through/via”
ADV: adverb
Definition
Adverbs are words that typically modify adjectives, verbs or other adverbs for such categories as time, place, direction or manner.
Note that in Swedish, some adverbs may also function as
verbal particles, as in se ut “look” or gömma undan “hide away”. They
are still tagged ADV and not PART.
Examples
- mycket brådskande “very urgent”
- samtidigt “simultaneously”
- det är bara “it is only”
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.
Swedish auxiliary verbs can be divided into tense auxiliaries, modal auxiliaries, passive auxiliaries, and copulas.
Examples
- Tense auxiliary: har gjort “has done”, kommer (att) göra “is going to do”, hade gjort “hade done”
- Modal auxiliary: måste skapa “must create”, bör leda till “should lead to”
- Passive auxiliary: blev tvungen “was forced”, blir skalad “is peeled”
- Copula: är sjuk “is sick”, var en idiot “was an idiot”
Delimitation
The exact delimitation of auxiliaries in Swedish is not completely clear-cut, especially for the category of modal auxiliaries and copulas. In the Swedish UD treebank, we have adopted a consensus solution based on existing Swedish grammars, the original Talbanken annotation, and the universal UD guidelines. Below we list the verbs that may appear in each group:
- Tense auxiliary: har, komma
- Modal auxiliary: böra, kunna, måste, skola, vilja, må, torde, lär, få, behöva
- Passive auxiliary: bli
- Copula: vara
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
- och “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. Like adjectives, Swedish determiners typically agree with the noun they modify for gender and number, e.g. vår kost “our diet” (common singular), vårt samhälle “our society” (neuter singular), våra åsikter “our opinions” (plural).
Examples
- Articles: en “a/an”, ett “a/an”, den “the”, det “the”, de “the”
- Possessive determiners: min “my” as in min bil “my car”, deras “their” as in deras attityder “their attitudes”, ditt jobb “your job”
- Demonstrative determiners: detta “this/that” as in hela detta nätverk “this whole network”
- Interrogative determiners: vilket “which/what” as in vilket samband finns? “what relation is there?”
- Relative determiners: vilken “which/what” as in komma ihåg vilken tidning det var “remember which newspaper it was”
- Indefinite determiners: någon “any/some” as in det har inte gjorts någon undersökning “there hasn’t been any investigation”
- Totality determiners: alla “all”
- Negative determiners: ingen “no” as in han behöver ingen hjälp “he needs no help”
INTJ: interjection
Definition
An interjection is a word that is used most often as an exclamation or part of an exclamation.
Examples
- Tack! “Thanks!”
- Aj! “Ouch!”
- Pang! “Bam!”
NOUN: noun
Definition
Nouns are a part of speech typically denoting a person, place, thing, animal or idea.
Examples
- flicka “girl”
- katt “cat”
- träd “tree”
- luft “air”
- skönhet “beauty”
NUM: numeral
Definition
A numeral is a word, functioning most typically as a determiner 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 regardless of syntactic function and regardless of whether they are expressed as words (fyra “four”), digits (4) or Roman numerals (IV). By contrast, ordinal numerals are always tagged ADJ.
Note that in Swedish the decimal mark is most often a comma. Thousands are then separated by either a space or dot.
Examples
- 0, 1, 2, 3, 2014, 1 000 000, 3.000,15, 3,14159265359
- ett “one”, två “two”, tre “three”, sjuttiosju “seventy-seven”
- I, II, III, IV, V, MMXIV
PART: particle
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).
In Swedish PART is currently only used for the infinitive marker att. Note that not all instances of att are of type PART, as att can also be used as a SCONJ.
Example
- det är möjligt att förändra den “it is possible to change it”
PRON: pronoun
Definition
Pronouns are words that substitute for nouns or noun phrases. Their meaning is recoverable from the linguistic or extralinguistic context.
Examples
- Personal (subject) pronouns: jag “I”, du “you”, han “he”, hon “she”, det/den “it”, vi “we”, de “they”
- Personal (object)/reflexive pronouns: mig “me/myself”, dig “you/yourself”, honom “him”, henne “her”, sig “itself/himself/herself/themselves”, oss “us/ourselves”
- Demonstrative pronouns: detta “that/this” as in detta är en svår fråga “that is a difficult question”
- Interrogative pronouns: vem “who” vad “what” as in Vad tycker du? “What do you think?”
- Relative pronouns: vem, vad as in vem denna person än är “whoever this person is”
- Indefinite pronouns: någon “someone/anybody”, något “something/anything”
- Totality pronouns: alla “everyone”, allt “everything”
- Negative pronouns: ingen “nobody”, inget “nothing”
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 Swedish proper nouns differ from common nouns in inflecting only for case, not for definiteness or number.
Examples
- Ingmar, Ingrid
- Skåne, USA
- Expressen, Pirelli
PUNCT: punctuation
Definition
Punctuation marks are non-alphabetical characters and character groups used to delimit linguistic units in printed text. They are tagged PUNCT regardless of their function.
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.
Examples
- eftersom “because”
- om “if”
- att “that” as in visa att du kan klara det “show that you can do it”
SYM: symbol
Definition
A symbol is a word-like entity that differs from ordinary words by form, function, or both.
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.
The tag VERB is reserved for full lexical verbs, while auxiliary verbs are tagged AUX.
Examples
- att visa “to show”, jag visar “I show”, han visade “he showed”
- att flyga “to fly”, vi flyger “we fly”, de flög “they flew”
X: other
Definition
The tag X is used for words that for some reason cannot be assigned
a real part-of-speech category.
Note: Version 1 of the Swedish UD treebank used X for foreign words (corresponding to the language-specific tag UO), but from version 1.1 these words are given a proper linguistic category and X is currently not used in Swedish. However, it still exists as a potentially permissible tag.