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UD for Czech

Tokenization and Word Segmentation

• In general, words are delimited by whitespace characters. Description of exceptions follows.
• According to typographical rules, many punctuation marks are attached to a neighboring word. We always tokenize them as separate tokens (words); that holds even for hyphenated compounds such as česko-slovenský “Czech-Slovak” (three tokens) and for abbreviations such as atd. “etc.” (two tokens).
• A whitespace separating digits in a large number is not treated as a word separator. For example, 1 000 000 (“1,000,000” by English rules) is one token.
• There are several closed classes of contractions that are treated as multi-word tokens and segmented to individual syntactic words. The most prominent type is a subordinating conjunction fused with a conditional auxiliary: kdybych = když + bych “if I”. For more details, see tokenization.

Morphology

Tags

This is an overview only. For more detailed discussion and examples, see the list of Czech POS tags and Czech features.

• Czech uses all 17 universal POS categories, including particles (PART). At present, more than 70 word types are tagged PART. This is a legacy of an existing Czech morphological analyzer and many of these words should probably belong to another category in UD; however, the exact list has yet to be worked out.
• The pronoun (PRON) vs. determiner (DET) distinction is based on word lists because the traditional grammar does not define determiners. In general, words that inflect for gender, to be able to agree with a modified noun, are tagged DET, even if they act independently in a given sentence; that includes possessives. Pronominal quantifiers (which the traditional grammar includes in numerals) are DET as well.
• Czech has just one auxiliary verb (AUX), být (“to be”), but lemmas bývat and bývávat are also possible. They are in fact just variants of být, but they are separate lemmas because the morphological process that relates them to být is considered derivational. The auxiliary verb is used in several types of constructions:
  • The copula with non-verbal predicates.
  • Periphrastic future tense (future form of být + infinitive of the main verb).
  • Periphrastic past tense (present form of být + l-participle of the main verb; the auxiliary is omitted with 3rd-person subjects).
  • Periphrastic conditional (conditional form of být + l-participle of the main verb).
  • Periphrastic passive (any form of být, including periphrastic forms, + passive participle of the main verb).
• In other words, být, bývat and bývávat are the only lemmas that occur with the AUX tag. They may still occur also as normal VERB if they are used in purely existential sentences (i.e. such that don’t even indicate location because if they do, then být is treated as copula).
  • Note that this may be changed in future. Existential sentences could be treated as elliptical versions of locational sentences; then the verb would be the root, but it could still be tagged as AUX and the AUX-VERB distinction could be anchored in the lexicon.
• Verbs with modal meaning are not considered auxiliary in Czech.
• There are five main (de)verbal forms, distinguished by the UPOS tag and the value of the VerbForm feature:
  • Infinitive Inf, tagged VERB or AUX.
  • Finite verb Fin, tagged VERB or AUX.
  • Participle Part, tagged VERB or AUX (the so-called l-participle) or ADJ (all other participle types).
  • Converb Conv, tagged VERB or AUX.
  • Verbal noun Vnoun, tagged NOUN.

Nominal Features

• Nominal words (NOUN, PROPN and PRON) have an inherent Gender feature with one of three values: Masc, Fem or Neut. In some cases the masculine gender is further subclassified by the Animacy values Anim and Inan. Feminine and neuter nominals do not distinguish animacy grammatically.
  • The following parts of speech inflect for Gender and Animacy because they must agree with nouns: ADJ, DET, NUM, VERB, AUX. For verbs (including auxiliaries), only participles and converbs inflect for gender. Finite verbs don’t.
• The two main values of the Number feature are Sing and Plur. The following parts of speech inflect for number: NOUN, PROPN, PRON, ADJ, DET, VERB, AUX (finite, participles and converbs), marginally NUM.
  • Remnants of the Dual number occur only in the instrumental Case of a few nouns and all the agreeing parts of speech.
  • Selected nouns are plurale tantum (Ptan) or singulare tantum (Coll). These two values are lexical and cannot be used with the agreeing adjectives, determiners or verbs. They also never occur with pronouns.
• Case has 7 possible values: Nom, Gen, Dat, Acc, Voc, Loc, Ins. It occurs with the nominal words, i.e., NOUN, PROPN, PRON, ADJ, DET, NUM. It can occur with participles but only with those tagged as ADJ. It never occurs with verbs.
  • The Case feature also occurs with prepositions (ADP). Here it is a lexical feature. Prepositions do not inflect for case but they subcategorize for the case of their noun phrase.

Degree and Polarity

• Degree applies to adjectives (ADJ) and adverbs (ADV) and has one of three possible values: Pos, Cmp, Sup.
• Polarity has two values, Pos and Neg, and applies primarily to verbs (VERB, AUX), adjectives (ADJ) and adverbs (ADV) that can be negated using the bound morpheme ne-.
  • Occasionally ne occurs as an independent negation particle (PART) and is marked with Polarity=Neg.
  • The Polarity feature is not used with pronouns and determiners, although there is a subset of negative pronouns and determiners. The PronType=Neg feature is used there instead.
  • Since UD release 2.15, Polarity is not used with nouns, although in principle every noun can be negated. Negative nouns will now have negative lemmas (previously some of them had positive lemmas and Polarity=Neg, but it was not applied consistently).

Verbal Features

• Verbs have a lexical Aspect, either imperfective (Imp) or perfective (Perf). A few verbs are biaspectual and they lack the Aspect feature. Some imperfective verbs could be further classified as iteratives but they are not marked as such (although UD provides Aspect=Iter).
  • The Aspect feature should be also used with the corresponding derived nouns and adjectives (participles), if they have the VerbForm feature.
• Finite verbs always have one of three values of Mood: Ind, Imp or Cnd. The conditional mood is only used with conditional auxiliaries (bych, bys, by, bychom, byste). The l-participle of the main verb, that is needed to form a periphrastic conditional, is not marked with this feature.
• Verbs in the indicative mood always have one of three values of Tense: Past, Pres or Fut. Note that Tense=Pres is also used with forms of perfective verbs, which are formally present, but semantically future. Hence both jdu domů “I am going home” and přijdu domů “I will come home” end up marked as Tense=Pres. On the other hand, a few imperfective verbs can form a genuine future form using prefixes, and they are marked Tense=Fut: půjdu domů “I will go home”.
  • Imperative and conditional forms do not have the Tense feature (note that past and present conditionals are distinguished analytically).
  • The Tense feature is also used to distinguish present and past converbs (dělaje “while doing” vs. udělav “having done”), and present and past participles (dělající “doing” vs. udělavší “having done”). The l-participle (tagged VERB or AUX) also has Tense=Past because its primary function is to form the past tense. The passive participle does not have the Tense feature.
• There are two values of the Voice feature: Act and Pass. Only the passive participle has Voice=Pass. All other verb forms have Voice=Act.

Pronouns, Determiners, Quantifiers

• PronType is used with pronouns (PRON), determiners (DET) and adverbs (ADV).
• NumType is used with numerals (NUM), adjectives (ADJ), determiners (DET) and adverbs (ADV).
• The Poss feature marks possessive personal determiners (e.g. můj “my”), possessive interrogative, indefinite or negative determiners (e.g. čí “whose”), possessive relative determiners (e.g. jehož “whose”) and possessive adjectives (e.g. otcův “father’s”).
• The Reflex feature marks reflexive pronouns (se, si) and determiners (svůj). In Czech it is always used together with PronType=Prs.
• Person is a lexical feature of personal pronouns (PRON) and has three values, 1, 2 and 3. With personal possessive determiners (DET), the feature actually encodes the person of the possessor. Person is not marked on other types of pronouns and on nouns, although they can be almost always interpreted as the 3rd person.
  • As a cross-reference to subject, person is also marked on finite verbs (VERB, AUX).
• There are two layered features, Gender[psor] and Number[psor]. They appear with certain possessive adjectives and determiners and encode the lexical gender/number of the possessor. The extra layer is needed to distinguish these lexical features from the inflectional gender and number that mark agreement with the modified (possessed) noun.

Other Features

• Besides the layered features listed above, there are several other language-specific features:
  • NumForm
  • NumValue
  • NameType
  • AdpType
  • ConjType
  • Hyph
  • Style
  • PrepCase
  • Variant … distinguishes short and long forms of adjectives, a Slavic-wide phenomenon
  • Emph … used for emphatic -ž in Old Czech
• The following universal features are not used in Czech: Definite, Evident, Polite.

Syntax

This is an overview only. For more detailed discussion and examples, see the list of Czech relations, as well as Czech-specific examples scattered across the documentation of constructions.

Core Arguments, Oblique Arguments and Adjuncts

• Nominal subject (nsubj) is a noun phrase in the nominative case, without preposition.
  • If the noun phrase is quantified, it may be in the genitive, which is required by the quantifier. If this is the case, then the quantifier is attached using a special relation, either nummod:gov or det:numgov.
  • An infinitive verb may serve as the subject and is labeled as clausal subject, csubj. On the other hand, verbal nouns as subjects are just nsubj.
  • A finite subordinate clause may serve as the subject and is labeled csubj.
• Objects defined in the Czech grammar may be bare noun phrases in accusative, dative, genitive or instrumental, or prepositional phrases in accusative, dative, genitive, locative or instrumental. For the purpose of UD the objects are divided to core objects, labeled obj or iobj, and oblique objects, labeled obl:arg.
  • Bare accusative objects are considered core.
  • Bare dative, genitive and instrumental objects are considered oblique.
  • All prepositional objects are considered oblique.
  • Accusative objects of some verbs alternate with finite clausal complements, which are labeled ccomp.
  • If a verb subcategorizes for the infinitive (e.g. modal verbs or verbs of control), the infinitival complement is labeled xcomp.
  • If a verb subcategorizes for two accusative objects (which is quite rare), one of them should be labeled iobj. Core nominal objects in other situations are labeled just obj.
• Adjuncts (or, following the Czech grammar, adverbial modifiers realized as noun phrases) are usually prepositional phrases, but they can be bare noun phrases as well. They are labeled obl:
  • Temporal modifiers realized as accusative noun phrases: přijedu příští sobotu “I will come next Saturday.”
  • Dative noun phrases with benefactive or possessive role (i.e. if the verb does not subcategorize for a single dative object and if it is not a verb of giving (or similar), where the dative could be interpreted as the recipient. Example: uvařila mu oběd “she cooked (for) him a lunch.”
  • Instrumental noun phrases expressing the way or means with which something was done. Example: zbil psa klackem “he beat up the dog with a stick.”
  • All prepositional phrases that are not prepositional objects (i.e., their role and form is not defined lexically by the predicate) are adjuncts.
• Extra attention has to be paid to clitic forms of reflexive pronouns se (accusative) and si (dative). They can function as:
  • Core objects (obj or iobj): spatřil se/sebe v zrcadle “he sighted himself in the mirror,” ublížila si/sobě “she hurt herself.”
  • Reciprocal core objects (obj or iobj): líbali se “they were kissing each other,” vykali si “they used the polite form of address for each other.”
  • Reflexive passive (expl:pass): oběd se vaří “the lunch is being cooked,” lit. “the lunch cooks itself.”
  • Inherently reflexive verb, cannot exist without the reflexive clitic. In accord with the current UD guidelines, we label the relation between the verb and the clitic as expl:pv, not compound. Example: smála se “she laughed,” zvykla si “she got used to it.”
• In passive clauses (both reflexive and periphrastic passive), the subject is labeled with nsubj:pass or csubj:pass, respectively.
  • The auxiliary verb in periphrastic passive is labeled aux:pass.
  • If the demoted agent is present, it has the form of a bare instrumental phrase and its relation is labeled obl:agent.

Non-verbal Clauses

• The copula verb být (be) is used in equational, attributional, locative, possessive and benefactory nonverbal clauses. Purely existential clauses (without indicating location) use být as well but it is treated as the head of the clause and tagged VERB.

Relations Overview

• The following relation subtypes are used in Czech:
  • nsubj:pass for nominal subjects of passive verbs
  • csubj:pass for clausal subjects of passive verbs
  • obl:agent for agents of passive verbs
  • obl:arg for prepositional objects
  • expl:pv for reflexive clitics of inherently reflexive verbs
  • expl:pass for reflexive clitics in reflexive passives
  • aux:pass for passive auxiliaries
  • acl:relcl for relative clauses
  • nummod:gov for cardinal numbers that are attached as children of the counted noun but govern its case
  • det:numgov for pronominal quantifiers that are attached as children of the quantified noun but govern its case
  • det:nummod for pronominal quantifiers in cases in which they do not govern the case of the quantified noun
  • advmod:emph for adverbs or particles that modify noun phrases and emphasize or negate them
  • flat:foreign for non-first words in quoted foreign phrases
• The following main types are not used alone and must be subtyped: expl
• The following relation types are not used in Czech at all: clf, dislocated

Treebanks

There are five Czech UD treebanks:

• Czech-PDT
• Czech-CAC
• Czech-CLTT
• Czech-FicTree
• Czech-PUD

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