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Dependencies

Note: nmod, neg, and punct appear in two places.

Core dependents of clausal predicates
Nominal dep Predicate dep
nsubj csubj
nsubjpass csubjpass
dobj ccomp xcomp
iobj
Non-core dependents of clausal predicates
Nominal dep Predicate dep Modifier word
nmod advcl advmod
    neg
Special clausal dependents
Nominal dep Auxiliary Other
vocative aux mark
discourse auxpass punct
expl cop
Noun dependents
Nominal dep Predicate dep Modifier word
nummod acl amod
appos   det
nmod   neg
Compounding and unanalyzed
compound mwe goeswith
name foreign
Coordination
conj cc punct
Case-marking, prepositions, possessive
case
Loose joining relations
list parataxis remnant
dislocated reparandum
Other
Sentence head Unspecified dependency
root dep

Dependencies kk


acl:
clausal modifier of noun

acl stands for finite and non-finite clauses that modify a noun, in contrast to the advcl relation which is used for adverbial clauses that modify a predicate. The head of the acl relation is the noun that is modified, and the dependent is the head of the clause that modifies the noun.

We use acl for:

Verbal adjectives that modify nouns:

This relation may be tagged with acl:relcl in the future, as it is the way in which Turkic languages do relative clauses.

Gerunds in genitive modifying a noun:

Fronted relative clauses with empty copula:

Conditional phrases with ‘болса’:

Secondary predication:

edit acl

advcl:
adverbial clause modifier

Adverbial clause modifiers (advcl) are subordinate clauses that are not complements.

Note that unless there is a separate subject for the “subordinate” clause, the subject will be the same as for the main clause, but is not directly connected.

Comparison:

We also use advcl for the comparator in comparison constructions like “X is bigger than Y”, in Turkic, the “than Y” is in the ablative case and this depends on the adjective X.

edit advcl

amod:
adjectival modifier

Nouns may take adjectival modifiers, which are marked with the dependency type amod.

Ordinal numerals:

The amod relation is also used for ordinal numerals. Note that these may not be explicitly marked in the morphology.

Locative attributives:

Substantives in the attributive form of the locative (-DAGI) are also marked with amod. (Pending clarification)

edit amod

aux:
auxiliary

In Kazakh, only a closed list of verbs can act as auxiliaries. These are words take part in participle constructions.

The full list of auxiliaries is as follows:

  • ал- “do, make”
  • баста- “start”
  • бер- “”
  • біт- “”
  • бітір- “”
  • бол- “be”
  • ет- “”
  • жазда- “”
  • жат- “”
  • жүр- “”
  • қал- “”
  • кел- “come”
  • кет- “”
  • көр- “see”
  • отыр- “”
  • сал- “”
  • тұр- “stand”
  • шық- “”

Note: Some of these are ambiguous with lexical verbs.

Examples

edit aux

case:
case marking

The dependency type case is used for the postposition in postpositional phrases. The head of a postpositional phrase is the nominal, not the postposition, so as to analyse postpositional phrases similarly to nominal modifiers without a postposition. (Such nominal modifiers are frequent in Kazakh, as cases are often used for the same purpose as postpositions.) To the same end, the type case is used in combination with the type nmod, which is also used for nominal modifiers when no adposition is present (see nmod).

Note that case is not used with auxiliary nouns (sometimes called “postpositions”) in the form of N¹.gen N².poss.case, for those nmod should be used (following treatment in English of prepositional constructions like “in front of”).

edit case

ccomp:
clausal complement

Clausal complement is an object like clausal dependent. The governor is most commonly, although not always, the main verb or predicative of the main clause, and the dependent is the main verb or predicative of the dependent clause. The clausal complement can also modify a word other than a verb, most often a noun or pronoun. Most commonly clausal complements are verbal nouns in accusative or dative.

Another example:

Note that if the complement is completely controlled by the matrix verb, that is it does not permit another subject or object, then the relation should be xcomp.

We also use ccomp for the complement of reported speech clauses with де- (e.g. деп, деген, …)

edit ccomp

compound:
compound

compound is one of the three UD relations UD for compounding, together with mwe and name.

Nouns should modify appropriate noun in the compound in order to respect the branching structure.

Most uses of attr will be tagged with compound.

Nouns in the izafet construction (e.g. possessive on the final noun) should not get the compound relation, they should instead be labelled nmod:poss, e.g.

Numerical expressions consisting of multiple tokens are annotated using the compound dependency type. The last word of the numerical expression is the governor, and the number dependencies are chained.

edit compound

conj:
coordinated element

A conjunct is the relation between two elements connected by a coordinating conjunction, such және, мен, немесе, etc. We treat conjunctions asymmetrically: The head of the relation is the last conjunct and all the other conjuncts depend on it via the conj relation.

Warning: If two sentences are joined with a comma and there is no relation between them, the relation should be parataxis.

Diffs

Note: Coordination directionality is under discussion.

edit conj

cop:
copula

Warning: DRAFT

A copula verb is a linking verb that joins a subject with a predicate. Copular clauses receive a special treatment. The predicative acts as the head word of the clause, and the copular verb depends on it using a cop (copula) dependency. The cop relation is only applied when the verb is used to link a subject to its predicate (although the subject may be left out).

The full list of copula verbs is as follows:

  • бол- “be, become”
  • е- “be” (defective)

If the morphological analyser used outputs an е- copula in aorist third person then this is attached as a leaf node.

If the copula is not third person it has overt person marking:

In the past it surfaces as еді-:

Use of “бол” without a predicate:

Use of “бол” without subject or predicate:

Warning: DRAFT

edit cop

dobj:
direct object

The dependency type dobj is used for (nominal) direct objects of the verb.

Direct objects are typically in “nominative” (unmarked, indefinite accusative) or “accusative” (marked, definite accusative), but may be in other cases (e.g. dative).

Another example:

A dative direct object:

edit dobj

iobj:
indirect object

The indirect object of a verb is any nominal phrase that is a core argument of the verb but is not its subject or direct object. The prototypical example is the recipient of ditransitive verbs of exchange:

Note: Discussion of what constitutes a core argument in Kazakh is ongoing. The iobj relation will probably be discarded in favour of subcategorising nmod.

edit iobj

name:
name

Proper names constituted of more than one word are annotated using the dependency type name. The last (rightmost) word is the head, and the other words are direct dependents of the head. The last word is chosen to be the head because in Kazakh the last word carries the inflectional information of the whole structure.

The name dependency relation is used in cases where the multi-word name does not have an obvious internal syntactic structure, as is the case with for instance names of people (**).

If a name has an obvious internal structure, as is often the case in names of books and movies for instance, this structure is marked instead.

Diffs

Contrary to the general UD definition of name, in UD Kazakh the last word of the multi-word name expression is considered the head.

edit name

nmod:
nominal modifier

Nominal modifiers are inflected nominals which modify most commonly a verb or a noun phrase. They can occur alone or together with an postposition in an postpositional phrase. Both cases are analysed similarly, as semantically nominal modifiers and postpositional phrases are similar.

nmod is by far the most used relation in UD Kazakh.

Postpositional phrases:

Izafet construction:

Genitive nouns in the izafet construction get a special relation, nmod:poss, be they indefinite:

or definite:

edit nmod

punct:
punctuation

The dependency type punct is used to mark punctuation. The dependent is the punctuation symbol, and the governor is the element which the punctuation symbol delimits. For instance, with coordination, the last coordinated element is the head of all punct dependencies in the coordination.

Coordination and parataxis:

The punctuation attaches to the governor.

Adverbial clauses:

The punctuation attaches to the head of the adverbial phrase.

edit punct
BESbswyBESbswyBESbswyBESbswy