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UD for Marathi

Tokenization and Word Segmentation

• In general, words are delimited by whitespace characters. Description of exceptions follows.
• According to typographical rules, some punctuation marks (e.g., comma) are attached to a neighboring word, while others (e.g., the sentence-terminating danda) are not. We tokenize punctuation as separate tokens (words).
• Certain suffixes are treated as encliticized postpositions and segmented as separate syntactic words in the tree structure. The most prominent type is the possessive morpheme चा / ची / चे / च्या cā / cī / ce / cyā. Treating it as a separate word makes it easier to annotate Gender and Number, which agrees with the possessed entity and is independent of the host word (the possessor). It also increases parallelism with other related languages such as Hindi, where the corresponding morpheme is written as an independent orthographic word. Also note that a third syntactic word is sometimes attached to the right.

Morphology

Tags

• Marathi uses all 17 universal POS categories, including particles (PART). (But SYM does not occur in the current data.)
• Marathi has the following auxiliary verbs (AUX):
  • असणे asaṇe (“to be”) is used as copula and in periphrastic tenses. The forms of नाही are treated as negative forms of असणे (they share the lemma).
  • नको nako (“don’t”) is used to create negative imperative (prohibitive).
  • येणे yeṇe (“to come”) for the passive (with a non-finite form of the main verb).
  • जाणे jāṇe (“to go”) for the passive (with a non-finite form of the main verb).
  • Modal auxiliaries:
    • शकणे śakaṇe (“be able, can”)
    • पाहिजे pāhije (“needed, should, ought to”)
  • There are other verbs that are semantically weak and combine with non-finite forms of other verbs but they should not be analyzed as auxiliaries in UD. Instead the lexically more salient verb is attached as an xcomp of the less salient verb. Phase verbs, such as to begin/end, are an example:
    • लागणे lāgaṇe (“to start”) combines with a non-finite form of the lexical verb; this should be analyzed as a control verb construction (xcomp) rather than an auxiliary
    • देणे deṇe (“to give”) combines with a non-finite form of the lexical verb; has the meaning of “let it (be)”; should be analyzed as a control verb construction (xcomp) rather than an auxiliary
• 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. Two distinct forms are both annotated as infinitive and further distinguished by the language-specific feature InfForm:
    • Dict -णॆ, -आत -ṇe, -āta (the citation/dictionary form is -ṇe)
    • Incp -ऊ -ū
  • Finite verb Fin, tagged VERB or AUX.
  • Supine Sup, tagged VERB or AUX.
  • Participle Part, tagged VERB or AUX.
  • Converb Conv, tagged VERB or AUX.

Nominal Features

• Nominal words (NOUN, PROPN and PRON) have an inherent Gender feature with one of three values: Masc, Fem or Neut.
  • The following parts of speech inflect for Gender and Animacy because they must agree with nouns: ADJ, DET, VERB, AUX.
• 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, marginally ADP.
• Case has 10 possible values: Nom, Acc, Ins, Dat, Abl, Loc, Voc, Com, Erg, Abs. The first seven values (nominative to vocative) correspond to cases traditionally distinguished and ordered this way in the grammar of Sanskrit and its descendant languages. Only the “sixth case” (possessive/genitive) is missing because its morpheme is treated as a separate syntactic word (postposition). On the other hand some additional morphological cases are distinguished: the comitative (suffix -शी -śī) and the ergative (suffix -ने -ne). Finally, the label Abs is used for the bare stem that occurs in multiword tokens after cutting off the possessive postposition. The Case feature occurs with the nominal words, i.e., NOUN, PROPN, PRON, ADJ, DET, NUM, also with nominally used VERB.

Verbal Features

• Finite verbs always have one of four values of Mood: Ind, Imp, Sub, or Des.
• Verbs in the indicative mood always have one of three values of Tense: Past, Pres or Fut.
• Aspect has four possible values: Hab, Imp, Perf, Prosp.
• Voice only occurs with morphological causatives: Cau.
• Polarity has two values, Pos and Neg, and applies only to the auxiliaries (AUX) असणे asaṇe (“to be”) (both positive and negative forms) and नको nako (“don’t”) (only negative forms).

Pronouns, Determiners, Quantifiers

• PronType is used with pronouns (PRON), determiners (DET) and adverbs (ADV).
• NumType is used with numerals (NUM) and adjectives (ADJ).
• Person is a lexical feature of personal pronouns (PRON) and has three values, 1, 2 and 3. Note however, that the third person pronouns overlap with demonstratives.
  • As a cross-reference to subject, person is also marked on finite verbs (VERB, AUX).
• Clusivity distinguishes inclusive and exclusive 1st person plural pronouns.
• Deixis distinguishes proximate and remote demonstratives.

Syntax

This is an overview only. For more detailed discussion and examples, see the list of Marathi relations.

Core Arguments, Oblique Arguments and Adjuncts

• Like in other Indo-Aryan languages, Marathi shows split ergativity. In present tense, the nominal subject (nsubj) is a bare noun phrase in the nominative case, without preposition, and the verb cross-references its person and number. However, for transitive verbs in the past tense, the subject (actor) is in the ergative case, and the verb cross-references the person and number of the object, which is in the nominative form.
  • For some experiencing predicates, dative noun phrases may be marked as non-canonical subjects.
  • A subordinate clause may serve as the subject and is labeled csubj.
• Direct objects are bare noun phrases in accusative or nominative.
• Indirect objects are bare noun phrases in dative.
• In passive clauses, the subject is labeled with nsubj:pass or csubj:pass, respectively.
  • The auxiliary verb in periphrastic passive is labeled aux:pass.

Relations Overview

• The following relation subtypes are used in Marathi:
  • nsubj:pass for nominal subjects of passive verbs
  • csubj:pass for clausal subjects of passive verbs
  • aux:pass for passive auxiliaries
  • cop:own for copulas in possessive-existential clauses
  • acl:relcl for relative clauses
  • compound:lvc for light verb constructions
  • compound:svc for serial verb constructions
  • compound:redup for reduplications
  • nmod:poss for possessive/genitive modifiers
• The following relation types are not used in Marathi at all: expl, clf

Treebanks

There is 1 Marathi UD treebank:

• Marathi-UFAL

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