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UD for Abkhaz

Tokenization and Word Segmentation

• All punctuation from the original text is kept.

• Tokenization is based on whitespace and punctuation.

• No words with spaces or multiword tokens do occur.

• No clitics are split off.

Morphology

Lemmatisation

• The lemma forms are the tranditional dictionary entry forms for Abkhaz, viz. the form with the generic article а- for nouns and adjectives, and the verbal noun (masdar, with generic article) for verbs. The lemma form of a predicate derived from a noun or an adjective is the underlying noun or adjective. As is customary in Abkhaz dictionaries, the generic article is set off by a hyphen.

• All lemmas are marked by stress, which is a distinctive feature in Abkhaz (with many minimal pairs that differ only in stress position).

• For verb lemmas, limited morpheme segmentation is available in the MISC column, marked with the feature LMSeg. Verb lemmas are segmented into generic article, preverb(s), causative prefix (р:), stem, static suffix (-заа-), and masdar ending (-ра), as: а-(PV·)(р:)STEM-(заа-)ра. (Example: а-ҽ·а·зы́·ҟа·ҵа-ра, а-р:ба-ра́).

Tags

• The Abkhaz treebank uses all universal POS tags except X.

• The POS tag VERB is used for genuine verbs including verbal nouns (masdars), and for predicates derived from other word classes (adjectives, nouns).

• The POS tag PART is used for the words ҳәа, уҳәа (direct speech/quote particles).

• The copula verb а́кә-заа-ра is tagged as AUX. There are no (other) auxiliary verbs in Abkhaz.

Features

The morphological features are automatically derived from the feature set used in the AbNC, which is a proprietary feature set containing some features that are difficult to translate to UD features and thus are omitted as yet.

Nominal Features

• Definite: Def, Ind.
• Number: Sing, Plur.
• Gender: Masc, Fem, used for PRON and PROPN.
• Gender[psor]: Fem, Masc, Neut, used for ADV, ADP, PRON, NOUN and VERB. The value Neut is used for affixes that agree with non-human possessors, which traditionally are not called Neuter.
• Number[psor]: Sing, Plur.
• Person[psor]: 1, 2, 3, Rel. The relative marker behaves in many respects (both morphologically and syntactically) like a person marker, so it is included here.
• Animacy: Hum, Nhum.
• Case: Abe, Ben, Ess, Ine, Ins, Lat, Loc, Ter. All cases except Ess are fused postpositions that could alternatively be analyzed as clitics. This would however make it necessary to split them off.

Verbal Features

Person, Number and Gender are marked in the verb for a variety of syntactic functions. Since Abkhaz has no case marking the features are qualified by those syntactic functions, which are:

• subj: subject, Column-I marker in intransitive verbs, and Column-III marker in transitive verbs.
• obj: direct object, Column-I marker in transitive verbs.
• io: indirect object, Column-II marker. Also used for the Column-II marker of the copula verb cross-indexing the predicative.
• lo: local object, whose marker is attached to a local preverb in the verbal complex.
• ro: relational object, whose marker is attached to a relational marker in the verbal complex.
• po: potential(is) object, whose marker is attached to the potential or the unvoluntary marker in the verbal complex.
• refl: inner reflexive.
• cs: causee.

The following verbal features are used:

• Gender[subj], Gender[obj]: Fem, Masc, Com, Neut.
• Gender[io], Gender[lo], Gender[ro], Gender[po], Gender[refl], Gender[cs]: Fem, Masc, Neut.
• Number[subj], Number[obj], Number[io], Number[lo], Number[ro], Number[po], Number[refl], Number[cs]: Sing, Plur.
• Person[subj], Person[obj], Person[io], Person[lo], Person[ro], Person[po], Person[refl], Person[cs]: 1, 2, 3, Rel, Rec.
• VerbForm: Fin, NonFin, Vnoun.
• Dyn: Yes, No.
• Voice: Cau, Inv, Pass.
• Aspect: Iter.
• Tense: Pres, Aor, Imp, Past, Fut, Fut2, Prf, Pqp, Cnd, Cnd2.
• Mood: Imp, Int, Opt, Prp, Sub, Cnd, Cnd2, Nec.
• Polarity: Neg.
• Evident: Nfh, Nfh2. Those are present and past evidential.
• Animacy: Hum, Nhum. Animacy is a verbal feature when the verb is a predicate derived from a noun.

The Perfect tense, Prf is a tense on its own and not equal to Aspect=Perf, since other tenses (Aor) may have perfective aspect.

There are two Conditional tenses, Cnd, Cnd2, and two Conditional moods Cnd, Cnd2 that combine with tenses.

Numbers

Cardinal numbers in Abkhaz can optionally be prefixed to a noun. In such cases, the noun has the feature Number: Card.

Pronouns, Determiners, Quantifiers

(To be added.)

Other Features

• The features Clusivity, Degree, Foreign, NounClass, Polite, Reflex, Typo are not in use.

Syntax

Abkhaz is a polysynthetic, head-marking language; all core arguments (subject, direct, indirect, locational, relational objects, causee), in addition to inner reflexives and reciprocals, are cross-referenced in the verb by prefixes. The language is morphologically ergative, which is apparent from the function of the argument prefixes (e.g., the column-I prefix marks the subject in intransitive verbs, but the direct object in transitive verbs). Case-marking is lacking, but the prefixes agree in person, number, gender and animacy with their arguments.

There are four argument-changing alterations a verb can undergo: passive, causative, potentialis and involuntative.

Passive and causative behave as expected. The potentialis alteration, introduced by the potential marker -з-, changes the subject of a transitive verb into a potential object (po), whereas the direct object becomes the subject. Example: и-ҟа-сы-м-ҵе-ит (do:3-PV-subj:1sg-Neg-ROOT-Aor) I did not do it vs. и-с-зы-ҟа-м-ҵе-ит (subj:3-po:1sg-POT-PV-Neg-ROOT-Aor) I could not do it. In intransitive verbs, no arguments are changed.

The involuntative, marked by -амха-, behaves in the same way. It describes an action that happens inadvertently, unintentionally: и-с-амха-фе-ит (subj:3-po:1sg-INVOL-ROOT-Aor) I ate it by accident/mistake.

Relations Overview

• The following relation subtypes are used:
  • obj:lo local object.
  • obj:ro relational object.
  • obj:po potential object.
  • obj:poss possessive object, cross-referenced by a possessive marker.
  • ccomp:obj clausal complement cross-referenced by a direct object marker.
  • ccomp:iobj clausal complement cross-referenced by an indirect object marker.
  • ccomp:quote direct speech clause introduced by ҳәа and cross-referenced by the direct object marker of a speech verb
  • ccomp:purp purposive clausal complement.
  • xcomp:obj open clausal complement cross-referenced by a direct object marker.
  • xcomp:lo open clausal complement cross-referenced by a local object marker.
  • advcl:cond conditional adverbial clause.
  • advcl:purp purposive adverbial clause.
  • advcl:conv dependent clause headed by a converb.
  • advcl:compar dependent clause headed by a nonfinite verb with the AsIf marker.
  • advcl:quote dependent direct speech clause introduced by ҳәа but not cross-referenced in the verb.
  • advcl:seq sequential construction with a dependent clause headed by a verb in the past indefinite (Past) attached to a finite aorist.
  • acl:relcl relative clause complement.
  • compound:prt particle compound.
  • compound:pred connects two (or more) parts of a multi-word predicate.

Treebanks

There is one Abkhaz UD treebank:

• Abkhaz

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