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This page pertains to UD version 2.

Proper: reference to a specific entity

Values: Yes

This is a binary (yes/no) lexical feature that is only annotated when its value is Yes.

Yes: common phrase used for a specific referent

A positive value of Proper is assigned to those otherwise common words (mostly nouns and adjectives, but also whole phrases) whose extension in a given context is restricted to a single, specific individual, object, place, event or entity in general, without need to be further determined, all the while keeping their common meaning.

In other words, Proper=Yes is used for common nominal phrases which can be considered proper nouns only with respect to a limited context and given some prior knowledge. Examples are nicknames, epithets by antonomasia, titles of books, and so on.

This feature is of purely “lexical” nature, as it (usually) is not reflected morphologically nor syntactically.

A noun receiving the part-of-speech tag for proper nouns (PROPN) is implicitly considered to have a positive value of Proper.

Examples


Proper in other languages: [la]