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 Danish normally agree in gender and number with the noun they modify (both in attributive and predicative position), e.g. en stor forskel “a big difference” (common singular), et stort problem “a big problem” (neuter singual) and store dele “big parts” (plural).
Danish adjectives have positive/comparative/superlative degree, e.g. hurtig/hurtigere/hurtigst (fast/faster/fastest).
Examples
- gammel/gammelt/gamle “old”
- grøn/grønt/grønne “green”
- ufatlig/ufatligt/ufatlige “incomprehensible”
ADP: adposition
Definition
Adposition is a cover term for prepositions and postpositions. Danish has prepositions but not postposition.
Examples
- i “in/on”
- på “of/at”
- gennem “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 Danish, some adverbs may also function as
verbal particles, as in se ud “look”. They
are still tagged ADV and not PART.
Examples
- meget vigtigt “very important”
- væk “away”
- ikke “not” as in jeg spiser ikke rejer “I do not eat prawns”
- pludselig “suddenly”
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.
Danish auxiliary verbs can be divided into tense auxiliaries, modal auxiliaries, passive auxiliaries, and copulas.
Examples
- Tense auxiliary: har købt “has bought”
- Modal auxiliary: kunne tænke “can think”
- Passive auxiliary: blev fundet “was found”
- Copula: var grøn “was green”, er en løsning “is a solution”
Delimitation
Auxiliaries are a closed-class list. The following list breaks down the lemmas of the words marked as AUX into the four kinds of auxiliary verb (which are later disambiguated by their dependency label).
- Tense auxiliary: have
- Modal auxiliary: burde, kunne, måtte, turde,skulle, ville
- Passive auxiliary: blive
- Copula: væra
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. Like adjectives, Danish determiners typically agree with the noun they modify for gender and number, e.g. din dreng “your boy” (common singular), dit barn “your child” (neuter singular), dine døtre “your daughters” (plural).
Examples
- Articles: en “a/an”, et “a/an”, den “the”, det “the”, de “the”
- Possessive determiners: min “my” as in min bil “my car”, deres “their” as in deres holdninger “their opinions”, dit job “your job”
- Negative determiners: ingen “no” as in han har ingen empati “he has no empathy”
INTJ: interjection
Definition
An interjection is a word that is used most often as an exclamation or part of an exclamation. Standalone or pre-sentence ja and nej (yes and no), as well as greeting forms, are also treated as interjections in Danish.
Examples
Hmm! “Thanks!” Åh! “Oh!” Hej! “Hello!”
NOUN: noun
Definition
Nouns (i.e. common nouns) are a part of speech typically denoting a person, place, thing, animal or idea.
Examples
- pige “girl”
- kat “cat”
- træ “tree”
- luft “air”
- skønhed “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 (fyre “four”), digits (4) or Roman numerals (IV). By contrast, ordinal numerals like første (first) are always tagged ADJ.
Note that in Danish 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
- et “one”, to “two”, tre “three”, nitten “nineteen”
- I, II, III, IV, V, MMXIV
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).
In Danish PART is currently used for the infinitive marker at. Note that not all instances of at are of type PART, as at can also be used as a SCONJ.
Example
- det er muligt at ændre det “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: jeg “I”, du “you”, han “he”, hun “she”, det/den “it”, vi “we”, I “you (pl.)” , de “they”
- Placeholder personal pronoun: man “one” as in man kan gå “one can go”
- Personal (object)/reflexive pronouns: mig “me/myself”, dig “you/yourself”, ham “him”, henne “her”, sig “itself/himself/herself/themselves”, os “us/ourselves”, hinanden “one another/each other”
- Demonstrative pronouns: dette “that/this” as in dette er et svært spørgsmål “that is a difficult question”
- Possessive pronouns: vores “ours”
- Interrogative pronouns: hvad “what”
- Relative pronouns: hvis “whose”
- Indefinite pronouns: nogen “someone/anybody”, noget “something/anything”
- Totality pronouns: alting “everything”
- Negative pronouns: ingen “no/none” as in ingen af os “none of us”
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 Danish proper nouns differ from common nouns in inflecting only for case, not for definiteness or number, as they are definite and singular by default.
Examples
- Anna, Otto
- Skåne, USA
- Texaco, 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 dependent of the other.
Examples
- da “since”
- hvis “if”
- at “that” as in konstatere at manden har søgt hjælp “ascertain that the man has looked for help”
SYM: symbol
Definition
A symbol is a word-like entity that differs from ordinary words by form, function, or both.
In the Danish treebank SYM is used for mathematical operators or the section (§) sign.
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
- at vise “to show”, jeg viser “I show”, han viste “he showed”
- at flyve “to fly”, vi flyver “we fly”, de fløj “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.
The X tag is disprefered, but kept in the treebank from the conversion of the previous tags in the initial distribution of the Copenhagen Dependency Treebank for foreign words, OCR errors, and parts of distributionally arranged compounds like musik- og billedprogrammer “music and image programs”