UD for Neapolitan
Tokenization and Word Segmentation
- Words are delimited by whitespace or apostrophes. The apostrophes indicate elision, i.e. the omission of a sound in a word.
- In Neapolitan, articles undergo elision, e.g.: unu → ‘nu.INDF.M; de/re → ‘e.GEN
- Multiword tokens do occur, namely:
Morphology
Tags
- Neapolitan uses all 17 universal tags.
- Auxiliaries are verbal, usually formed from the verbs essĕ “to be” and avé “to have”, which indicates perfective aspect. The tag AUX is mainly used to mark:
- essĕ “to be”, which is also the copula;
- tense auxiliaries formed, as also in Italian, by essĕ “to be” and avé “to have”;
- auxiliaries in the progressive form, such stonghĕ venennĕ “I am coming”
- (De)verbal forms can be tagged in different ways.
- Participles are usually tagged as ADJ.
- Infinitive forms are always tagged as NOUN.
Features
- Nouns are inflected by Gender and Number.
- Sometimes, the difference is only graphic, as most word-final vowels are reduced (indicated with a breve diacritic).
- Example: gruossŏ “big”.
Masc
.Sing
vs. gruossĕ “big”.Masc
.Plur
- Example: gruossŏ “big”.
- Grammatical gender is often marked not by the final vowel, but by the word-internal vowel or diphthong.
- Example: gruossŏ “big”.
Masc
.Sing
vs. grossă “big”.Fem
.Sing
- Example: gruossŏ “big”.
- Verbs all end with a reduced vowel. However, the distinction between etymological forms is retained by graphemes with a breve diacritic.
- Example: ijĕ magnĕ “I eat”; issŏ magnă “he eats”
- Often there is alternation between imperfect and simple past (with perfective meaning), used interchangeably, e.g.:
- Venevă ccà e facettĕ… “(He/she) came here and was like…” venevă.IMP; facettĕ.PERF
- Adverbs inflect for degree. However, Neapolitan tends to use the intensifier cchiù “more” in phrases like cchiù megliŏ lit. “more better”, where megliŏ “better” is already in the comparative grade.
Syntax
- Subjects are constituted of noun phrases, which can be also deverbal. They are not marked and usually preceed the verb, except for presentational constructions, e.g.:
- Dimmanĕ venĕ Giuvannĕ “Tomorrow John is coming”
- Subjects can be omitted, since Neapolitan is a pro-drop language.
- Objects usually follow the main verb, or can be constituted by whole clauses, e.g.:
- Cantavă ‘na canzonă “(He/she) sang/was singing a song”
- Whole clauses can also be subjects of benefactive constructions in dative, e.g.:
- Mĕ piacĕ ‘e pazzià a ppallonĕ “I like to play football”
Treebanks
There is 1 Neapolitan UD treebank: