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UD for Khoekhoe

Tokenization and Word Segmentation

Tokenization and Word Segmentation

• Words are generally delimited by whitespace. Description of exceptions follows.

• There are several cases of multiword-tokens (clitics):

  • Subject person-gender-number markers are placed in the second position in clauses. If something other than the subject root is in the first place, and the subject person-gender-number marker is non-syllabic, then the subject person-gender-number marker is written together with the previous word, but they are two separate words. Example: Tsîb = xawe + s “but she.”

  • In coordinate conjunctions, an additional conjunction contracted with a person-gender-number marker is sometimes added. For example, tsîra = tsî + ra “and they.”

  • Clause nominalization (usually s, but could be other person-gender-number markers) is written right after the clause without a whitespace and can take the oblique suffix -a. For example, ǁgoesa = ǁgoe + sa “lying down.”

  • Some subordinate clause markers (se for clause of manner, ga for clause of purpose, o “when/if”) are written at the end of the clause without a whitespace in between.

• According to typographical rules, punctuation marks are attached to a neighboring word. We usually tokenize them as separate tokens (words) with the exception of hyphens, which are sometimes used for compounds (ǁkhopa-amgua “keys”) and nominal suffixes (ǁgam-i “water”).

• There are no words with whitespace.

Morphology

Tags

• Khoekhoe uses 16 universal tags; the current data does not contain any occurrences of the SYM category.

• There are 6 word types marked as PART:

  • Quotation marker ti

  • Nominalizer s preceding tsîn(a) ‘also’

  • Negation particle tama

  • Emphatic markers (e.g., kha emphatic interrogative marker)

  • Negative tag question particle tama-e ‘NEG.TAGQ’

  • Temporal genitive linker kam

• Most auxiliaries (AUX) in Khoekhoe are not verbal. The only two verbal auxiliaries are mâ “stand” and sī “come.” These are marked as AUX whenever they are not in the clause final position and have an indirect meaning. Most modal verbs act similarly to regular verbs (e.g., ǁkhā “be able” and ǁoa “be unable”), thus they are tagged VERB. The exception is moet “must”, borrowed from Afrikaans, is allways in the auxiliary position, therefore it is tagged AUX.

• In most cases, Khoekhoe determiners (DET) do not have person-gender-number suffixes and precede a nominal (the same is true about adjectives), whereas pronouns (PRON) have person-gender-number suffixes. For example, the proximate demonstrative nē in nē ǂnamipeb “this area” is tagged as DET, whereas a proximate demonstrative pronoun nēs is tagged as PRON. The only exception to the rule is the determiner hoa “all, both,” which can follow the nominal that it modifies and get the same person-gender-number marker. For example, tsaudi hoadi “all wells.”

• No (de)verbal forms are present in Khoekhoe.

Features

Nominal features

• Nominal words (NOUN, PROPN, PRON) inflect for Case (Nom, Acc, Voc), Gender (Masc, Neut, Fem), Number (Sing, Dual, Plur), Assoc (Yes) and Person (1, 2, 3) features.

  • ADJ and DET that follow nouns they modify also get those four features.

  • NUM that function as a nominal in a sentence also get those 4 features.

  • Some nominal ADV (like tsîn(a) “also”, on(a) “too”) and nominalizer s (as PART or SCONJ) have the Case feature (only Acc, Nom), because they take the case of the whole noun phrase.

  • Some nominal ADV (like ǀgui “only”) may have all four nominal features, when they follow the nominal they modify.

• The Degree (Dim) feature can occur with NOUN. It can also occur with ADJ and VERB.

Verbal features

• VERB may have the Voice (Act, Appl, ApplPass, ApplRcp, ApplRefl, Pass, Rcp, Refl) feature.

• AUX has one or more of the following features: Aspect (Imp, Perf, Punct), Evident (Nfh), Mood (App, Ass, Imp, Ind, Int, Pot, Prh), and Tense (Fut, Past, Pres, RecPast).

Pronouns, Determiners, Quantifiers

• PronType (Dem, Emp, Ind, Int, Neg, Prs, Rel, Tot) is used with PRON, DET, and ADV.

• Diexis (Contr, Prox, Remt) is used with PRON, DET, and ADV.

• NumType (Card, Ord) is used with NUM and ADJ.

• Poss (Yes) is used with DET (ti “my”, sa “your (sg.)”) and associative PRON (âta, âb, etc.).

• Clusivity (Ex, In) is used with first-person plural personal PRON.

Polarity

• Polarity (Neg, Pos) is used to mark the negative PART tama, the negative future AUX tite, the negative INTJ hî-î, nee, and the positive INTJ ā, î, ja.

Other features

• Typo (Yes) and Abbr (Yes) can be used with every part of speech.

• ExtPos (ADP, ADV, CCONJ, DET, SCONJ) can be used with ADP, DET, NOUN, PART

• The following universal features are not used in Khoekhoe: Definite, DeixisRef, Evident, Foreign, NounClass, Polite, VerbForm, Voice.

Syntax

Core Arguments, Oblique Arguments and Adjuncts

• In Khoekhoe, the nominal subject is identified based on its person-gender-number marker. This marker appears in the second clause position as a suffix attached to the subject root if present. Otherwise, it’s a separate clitic word. The actual lexical subject noun phrase (nsubj) shares the same person-gender-number as the marker and lacks a postposition. It can appear in the first position with the nominative case or within the clause with the accusative (oblique) case. Omission of the lexical subject is also possible. When only the person-gender-number marker exists, it assumes the nsubj role. However, if both the marker and the lexical subject are present, the person-gender-number marker is expl.

• The direct nominal object (obj) appears in either of two forms:

  • with the accusative (oblique) case and no postposition, typically placed before the predicate;

  • as an object pronoun following the main predicate.

• If both object forms from above are present in the clause, then the object pronoun is typically an indirect nominal object (iobj) of the ditransitive verb. Otherwise, the indirect nominal object is one of the nominals with the accusative (oblique) case and no postposition, depending on the meaning.

• Adjuncts are usually postpositional phrases, but they can be bare noun phrases as well. They are labeled obl:

  • Temporal modifiers realized as accusative noun phrases: ǁîb ge ǂû-e hō tamase ǃnona tsēde ge ǀgore. “He prayed for three days without getting any food.”

Non-verbal Clauses

• The copula auxiliaries a (present, could be omitted) and i (non-present) are used for copulas of equation, attribution, possession, benefaction. Location and existance clauses use verbs hâ “stay” or ǀkhai ‘be absent’, which are treated as the head of the clause and tagged VERB.

Relations Overview

• The 13 relation subtypes used in Khoekhoe are:

  • acl:relcl relative clause modifier
  • advmod:emph emphasizing word, intensifier
  • csubj:outer outer clausal subjects of predicates that are clauses
  • csubj:pass clausal subjects of passive clauses
  • expl:impers impersonal expletive
  • flat:name names
  • flat:num flat multiword number
  • flat:reparandum repeated reparandum
  • flat:title title
  • iobj:appl applied indirect object
  • nmod:poss possessive nominal modifier
  • nsubj:outer outer clause nominal subject
  • nsubj:pass for nominal subjects of passive clauses
  • obj:appl applied direct object
  • obl:agent for demoted agents in passive clauses

• The following relation types are not currently used in Khoekhoe: clf, compound, dep, dislocated.

Treebanks

There is 1 Khoekhoe UD treebanks:

• Khoekhoe-KDT

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