UD for Greek
There are two UD treebanks of Modern Greek (EL): UD_Greek-GDT, UD_Greek-GUD. GDT and GUD have adopted the same tokenization and word segmentation guidelines. The two treebanks present notable differences as regards morphological annotation. The current UD documentation of EL morphology describes the choices adopted in GUD. The editing of the syntactic annotation in GUD is an ongoing project, so the current UD documentation of EL syntax describes the choices adopted in GDT only.
Tokenization and Word Segmentation-GDT,GUD
- Words are generally delimited by whitespace or punctuation. Exceptions:
- Numerical expressions are treated as single words and may contain punctuation or symbols: 15, 2.200, 0,05%
- Dates are treated as nouns and in some cases may contain underscores: 1871/72, 1943-44, 2012-03-25, 20ετίας, ‘44, 11/24_Νοεμβρίου_1916, 5ης_Νοεμβρίου_2001
- Abbreviations are treated as single words and may contain punctuation: ΕΕ, χλμ., π.Χ.
- There is one group of contractions that are treated as multi-word tokens and are segmented to individual syntactic words, namely combinations of the preposition σε and types of the definite article: στον = σ + τον “in/to/on the”.
Morphology-GDT
PoS-GDT
- GDT uses 16 universal POS categories, including particles (PART). No interjections (INTJ) exist in the current dataset.
- Words tagged PART are the negative particles δεν and μην.
- The current set of auxiliary words (AUX) include:
- the copula είμαι (be)
- the auxiliary verb έχω (have), which combines with the infinitive to form perfect tenses
- the impersonal verb πρέπει (must)
- the indeclinable future marker θα
- the indeclinable subjunctive particle να
- the indeclinable subjunctive particle ας
- The tag DET is used for the definite and the indefinite article. The tag PRON is used for pronouns occurring as the head of a noun phrase, for pronouns preceding or following their nominal head with which they agree in gender, number and case, or for possessives in the genitive following their head
- Past participles used adjectivally are mostly tagged ADJ
Features-GDT
- Nouns have inherent Gender and inflect for Number (singular or plural), and Case (nominative, genitive, accusative and vocative). Remnants of the dative case also exist in set phrases.
- Finite verbs of the Ind mood have one of two values of Voice:
Act
andPass
; one of two values of Tense:Past
andPres
; one of two values of Number:Sing
andPlur
; and one of three values of Person:1
,2
and3
. Finite verbs of the Imp mood have only2
nd Person. The Aspect feature hasImp
andPerf
values. There are three types of nonfinite forms: infinitives used to form perfect tenses, passive voice-μένος
participles, and active voice-[ώο]ντας
converbs. - Adjectives agree with nouns (in both attributive and predicate position) with respect to the Gender, Number and Case features.
- Pronouns inflect for Gender, Number, Case like nouns and adjectives.
- Degree applies to adjectives (ADJ) and adverbs (ADV) and has one of three possible values:
Pos
,Cmp
,Sup
Morphology-GUD
Major differences at PoS level between GDT and GUD are the treatement of να and the system of determiners DET as GUD adheres to UD.v2 morphological guidelines quite closely. Other differences also exist, e.g., the treatment of participles, που, etc.
PoS-GUD
- GUD uses 17 universal POS categories. INT is used for words such as αμήν “amen”, ναι / ne “yes”, INTJ with Polarity=Pos, όχι /ochi “no/not”, INTJ with Polarity=Neg, καλημέρα / kalimera “goodmorning”, καληνύχτα / kalinichta “goodnight”, etc.
- The tag ADJ is assigned to:
- ordinary adjectives and ordinal numerals
- nationalities, , e.g., Έλληνας / Elinas “Greek”
- professions, e.g., αστυνομικός / astinomikos “policeman”
- some Ancient Greek adverbs that are still in use in EL: νυν / nin “current”, τέως / teos “past”
- pieces of phrases received from older forms of the language: καθωσπρέπει / kathosprepi “proper” (originally two words written as one word nowadays).
- formations in -μένος that are not related to a verb in use in EL, e.g. χιλιοτραγουδισμένος / chiliotragoudismenos “storied”, ξακουσμένος / ksakousmenos “famous”, etc; these are assigned the tag ADJ.
- AUX is not specified for the feature Aspect. As auxiliary words (AUX) are considered:
- είμαι “be” when:
- when a participle depends on it; the participle is assigned the tag VERB and bears values for the feature Voice.
- when it is used to assign a property to an entity; typically, properties are denoted with adjectives, e.g., είμαι ψηλός “I am tall”. Otherwise, είμαι “to be” is assigned the tag VERB, e.g., είμαι στο σπίτι μου “I am at my place”.
- έχω “have”, in verb complexes, both active and passive ones; when έχω is used as a content verb it is assigned the tag VERB.
- the indeclinable θα, in verb complexes, both active and passive ones.
- the indeclinable να when:
- είμαι “be” when:
- As coordinating conjunctions CCONJ are considered words like και “and”, ή “or” or αλλά “but”. In correlative (paired) coordinating conjuctions such as είτε - είτε or ή - ή “either - or”, both words are annotated as CCONJ.
- The tag DET is assigned to the two articles, certain traditional adjectives (and their comparatives) and to a set of pronouns, namely: definite and indefinite article, adjectives denoting quantities and their comparatives, demonstrative and indefinite pronouns. DET is also assigned to interrogative and relative pronouns when they are followed by a noun.
- The negative particles δεν, μην and όχι (the last one, is considered a particle only in limited contexts) are tagged as PART. Οther words assigned the tag PART are ας, καν, μπας (και), μην, να (limited contexts), πάρα, μακάρι.
- The tag PRON is used for pronouns occurring as the head of a noun phrase, for pronouns preceding or following their nominal head with which they agree in gender, number and case, or for possessives in the genitive following their head. The indeclinable word που is assigned the tag PRON if it refers to a noun, otherwise it is considered a CCONJ or an SCONJ.
- The tag SCONJ is assigned to the indeclinable words να and που as described below:
- να is mainly used as a subordinating conjunction and is assigned the tag SCONJ; the clauses it introduces function as verb arguments, clausal nominal modifiers, goal denoting clauses where να or για να introduce the clause, and adverbial modifiers where να co-occurs with other uniflected words, e.g., αντί να, δίχως να, που να, πριν να, σαν να, χωρίς να, ώσπου να, ώστε να.
- που is assigned the tag SCONJ when it introduces a complement of saying or sense verbs (diagnostic: it can be replaced with the word ότι with somewhat different implications), a temporal clause together with the ADP μετά (diagnostic: the multiword conjunction μετά που can be replaced with the ADP αφού) or an etiological clause (diagnostic: it can be replaced with the word γιατί).”
- The tag VERB is assigned to:
- verbs, including είμαι “be” and έχω “have” when they are used as content verbs (not auxiliaries)
- participles ending in -μένος and -θείς. Ηowever, formations in -μένος not related to a verb in use, e.g., χιλιοτραγουδισμένος / chiliotragoudismenos “storied”, ξακουσμένος / ksakousmenos “famous”, are assigned the tag ADJ.
- non-inflecting verb forms ending in -όντας, -ώντας (adverbial participles) that share properties and usage of adverbs and verbs
Features-GUD
- Adjectives agree with nouns (in both attributive and predicate position) with respect to the Gender, Number and Case features.
- Case is an inflectional feature of nouns, proper nouns, adjectives, determiners, pronouns, numerals and verbs (participles). ΕL morphology distinguishes four cases:
Nom
,Gen
,Acc
,Voc
. Dative was used in older forms of the Greek language; in EL it occurs only in fixed expressions inherited from older Creek, e.g. γαία πυρί μιχθήτω ‘let earth be mixed with fire”. - Degree applies to nouns (NOUN), adjectives (ADJ) and adverbs (ADV):
- Degree of comparison is an inflectional feature of adjectives and some adverbs. EL marks morphologically the positive, comparative and absolute superlative degree while the superlative degree of adjectives is composite (definite article + comparative degree).
- EL expresses degree modification of nouns, adjectives, past participles and adverbs with a set of prefixes and suffixes (and a set of syntactic means). All affixation cases are assigned the feature el-DegreeMod with one of the two available values, Dim or Aug.
- Gender is a lexical feature of nouns, proper nouns, adjectives, determiners, pronouns, numerals and verbs(participles). There are three values of gender: masculine, feminine, and neuter. EL gender is grammatical although, in the case of annimates, it is more likely that grammatical gender denotes the sex.
- Nouns have lexical Gender and inflect for Number (singular or plural), and Case.
- Pronouns inflect for Gender, Number, Case like nouns and adjectives.
- The feature PronType applies to EL pronouns, determiners and adverbs. The following values have been used: Art: article, Dem: demonstrative pronoun, determiner or adverb, Emp: emphatic determiner, Ind: indefinite pronoun, determiner or adverb, Int: interrogative pronoun, determiner or adverb, Neg: negative pronoun, determiner or adverb, Prs: personal pronoun or determiner, Rel: relative pronoun, determiner or adverb, Tot: total (collective) pronoun, determiner or adverb.
- Finite verbs of the Ind mood have one of two values of Voice:
Act
andPass
; one of two values of Tense:Past
andPres
; one of two values of Number:Sing
andPlur
; and one of three values of Person:1
,2
and3
. Finite verbs of the Imp mood have only2
nd Person. The Aspect feature hasImp
andPerf
values. There are three types of nonfinite forms: infinitives, passive voice participles ending in-μένος
, and active voice converbs ending in-[ώ/ο]ντας
. The so-called infinitives are received from the perfective form of the verb and are used with the auxiliary έχω “have” to form certain composite tenses. It has no other usage in the language and it is not used as the lemma form (as infinitives are traditionally used). - Modern Greek verb tenses are formed periphrastically mainly (composite tenses). In the GUD treebanks there are three stand-alone verb forms, i.e., not supported by auxiliaries, that bear Tense: one that is classified as “Pres” but it is also used in the so-called Future tense formations, and two forms marked for “Past” that differ in terms of aspect (perfect, imperfect). There is no verb form marked for Future; instead, there is the particle θα that is considered an auxiliary in the Greek UD treebanks and is assigned the tense feature “Fut” (but it would be probably more accurate to consider it a marker of potentiality and drop the feature ‘Fut’ from the Greek UD treebanks).
All verb and auxiliary forms in composite tenses preserve their tense and mood features, if they are defined for them.
Syntax-GDT
- Nominal subjects (nsubj) are in the nominative case, without adpositions.
- Objects occur in the accusative case (direct objects) or in the genitive (indirect objects).
- All prepositional objects are currently labeled with the oblique relation.
- Case marking of subjects and objects allows all possible word order variations. However, when introducing new information the most frequent word orders are SVO and VSO. OVS sentences occur when the object is topicalized and they often involve a combination of an object and an object clitic.
- The copula verb είμαι (be) is used in equational, attributional, locative, possessive and benefactory nonverbal clauses. Different verbs like υπάρχω are typically used in existential clauses.
- The following subtypes are used in Greek:
- acl:relcl for relative clauses
- csubj:pass for clausal subjects of passive verbs
- nsubj:pass for nominal subjects of passive verbs
- obl:agent for agents of passive verbs
Syntax-GUD
Ongoing work.
Treebanks
There are two Modern Greed UD treebanks: UD_Greek-GDT and UD_Greek-GUD.
- Greek-GDT
- Greek-GUD will be uploaded soon.