PROPN: proper_noun
Definition
Proper nouns specifically represent the names of unique entities, such as individuals, organizations, or geographic locations. Similar to common nouns, Spanish proper nouns also have grammatical features such as gender and number. However, their gender and number are often inherent to the named entity and do not always follow the typical masculine and feminine patterns seen in common nouns. Proper nouns do not usually require articles, but when they do, the articles must agree with the proper noun’s gender and number.
Compound and simple proper nouns
Names of entities often consist of multiple words. It is important to note that the UPOS tag PROPN always pertains
to a single word and is not automatically used for all words in a multiword name. A word may occur in a multiword
name while being a common NOUN, an ADJ, DET, ADP etc. The status of a multiword named entity can
be optionally indicated on a separate annotation layer but it is not the focus of morphosyntax. Therefore, we need
to formulate rules when we classify a word as PROPN by itself.
Persons
- Given name of a person is
PROPN(Juan, María, William). - Surname of a person is
PROPN(Sánchez, Clinton), even if it is derived from a common noun or an adjective (Bueno). - Spanish function words in Spanish personal names keep their original UPOS: in Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra, de is ADP and y is CCONJ.
- Annotation of foreign function words in foreign personal names depends on how the corpus generally approaches annotation of foreign material.
- Similar approach applies to names of individual animals (not species), non-human characters in literature etc.
Locations
- Single-word names of cities, countries, mountains, rivers and other geographical features are
PROPNregardless whether they are Spanish or foreign and whether they look like a Spanish common noun or adjective (Madrid, India, Huascarán, Cuenca). - Spanish function words keep their original UPOS just like in personal names; for foreign function words it depends on the overall approach to foreign material. So, in Los Ángeles, the first word is DET (the name is Spanish, although the city now belongs to USA and is spelled without the accent in English); on the other hand, de in Rio de Janeiro does not have to be ADP, as the name is Portuguese.
- A combination of a Spanish adjective and common noun such as Buenos Aires is annotated
ADJ NOUN. - If a multiword name of a natural feature contains a common noun that denotes the type of the feature, that common
name is not
PROPN. For example, in Pico de Teide, the UPOS tags areNOUNfor Pico,ADPfor de, andPROPNfor Teide. Spanish adjectives keep theADJtag (as Negro in Río Negro). On the other hand, similar words in foreign names will typically end up asPROPNin Spanish, especially if their meaning is not obvious to average Spanish speaker (for example, in río Sông Hương, the word Sông is actually Vietnamese for “river”, but it is probably perceived just as a foreign name by most Spanish speakers).
Organizations, products, book/movie/song titles etc.
- Common Spanish words used as or in names of organizations and products keep their original (non-
PROPN) UPOS tag. Treatment of non-Spanish words depends on the overall approach to foreign material in the corpus. - Words created to name an organization or product are
PROPN(e.g., Samsung). - Multiword organization names may contain names of people or locations, then the above rules apply to such parts.
Abbreviations
- An abbreviation of a multiword name becomes
PROPN(assuming it is a single token) even if the individual words would not bePROPNwhen the name is spelled out. For example, ONU isPROPNbut Organización de las Naciones Unidas “United Nations” isNOUN ADP DET NOUN ADJ.
Examples
- Madrid “Madrid”
- Antonio “Antonio”
Capitalization
In Spanish, proper nouns are generally capitalized. This includes the first letter of the proper noun, as well as any other words within a multi-word proper noun, such as place or organization names, with some exceptions like prepositions or articles:
- Río de la Plata “La Plata River”
- Universidad de Salamanca “University of Salamanca”
Note that when proper nouns are used in an adjectival form, they may lose their capitalization and be tagged as ADJ as in vino francés “French wine” (instead of “vino Francés”)
PROPN in other languages: [bej] [bg] [bm] [cs] [cy] [da] [el] [en] [es] [et] [eu] [fi] [fro] [fr] [ga] [grc] [hu] [hy] [it] [ja] [ka] [kk] [kpv] [ky] [myv] [naq] [no] [oge] [pcm] [pt] [qpm] [ru] [sl] [sv] [tr] [tt] [uk] [u] [urj] [xcl] [xmf] [yue] [zh]