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UD for Pashto

For the principles of transliteration of Pashto used in UD see the Transliteration page.

Tokenization and Word Segmentation

• The words are delimited by whitespaces and punctuation. Any possible exceptions have not yet been established.
• Multiword tokens are used in several cases:
  • Partially separable verbs (see below) in forms, when the two parts are connected (بندوم bandawë́m “I close” → کوم band + بند kawë́m).
  • Separeted verb prefixes connected with negative particle (به ونه خورم bë wënë́ xorëm “I will not eat” → و wë + نه në).

Morphology

Lemmatization

• Direct (nominative) singular form is used as lemma for nominals.
• Infinitive is used as lemma for verbs, with these exceptions:
  • The verb “to be”, used as copula and auxiliary verb for perfect tenses, does not have the infitinive, so the form of first person singular of the present tense یم yëm “I am” is used instead.
  • The existential word شته šta “there is / there are”, tagged as VERB, has only one form, so it is used as the lemma.

Tags

• Pashto uses all 17 universal tags.
• Several words are tagged as PART:
  • Negative particles نه në and مه ma “no/not” and the affirmative particle هو ho “yes”.
  • Modal particles: باید bấyad (necessity “must / have to”), وای wây (past irreality).
  • Separeted verb prefixes: و wë.
• Only the verb یم yëm “to be” (used as copula and auxiliary verb for perfect tenses) and some uses of the verb کېدل kedë́l “to become” (when used as auxiliary verb for passive voice or potential forms) are tagged as AUX. Modal verbs, such as غوښتل ġox̌të́l “to want to”, are tagged as VERB (besides that, some modal meanings are expressed using modal particles or using the mentioned potential verb forms). Light verbs are tagged also as VERB, with the nominal part depending on them with xcomp relation.
• Pronouns that depend on nouns and behave similarly like their attributes (some of them even agree with the nouns in number, case and gender) are tagged as DET; possessive pronouns are mostly treated this way. Pronouns used individually (often as arguments of a verb) are tagged as PRON. This includes e.g. relative or non-possessive personal pronouns. Various interrogative, demonstrative or indefinite pronouns can be tagged both ways depending on the situation. Enclitic weak pronouns, used a objects or as alternative possessive pronouns, are always tagged as PRON, even when marking possession, because they do not have the attributive relation to the noun, e.g. they follow the noun, while all other pronouns tagged as DET precede it.
• The deverbal forms like infinitive or participles (sometimes behaving like verbal noun and verbal adjectives) are usually tagged as VERB. Only nouns and adjectives originally derived from infinitives or participles, but now perceived clearly as nouns and adjectives, are tagged as NOUN and ADJ.
• Adjectives and adverbs derived from adjectives have often the same form. Their tagging as ADJ or ADV depends on the context.

Features

• There are three VerbForm values used in Pashto: finite Fin, infinitive Inf and participle Part.
• An important feature of Pashto verbs is Aspect, which strictly divides verb forms to imperfect Imp and perfecgt Perf.
• The finite verb forms inflect for Mood feature with indicative Ind, imperative Imp and subjunctive Sub values.
• The finite verb forms conjugate for Tense feature taking present Pres, past Past or future Fut mark.
• The finite verb forms inflect also for the Person feature with the common three values, which is also an inherent feature of many personal pronouns.
• Generally all inlfectional parts of speech inflect for Number taking a singular Sing or a plural Plur value. Infinitives always behave like plural, so they do not have the number tagged. Non-past finite verb forms do not have the number feature in the third person, since the forms for both numbers are always identical.
• Nominals, participles and infinitives inflect for Case feature. There are four cases in Pashto: direct (marked as nominative) Nom, oblique (marked as accusative) Acc, ablative Abl and vocative Voc.
• Nouns and some pronouns have inherent Gender feature with two possible values: masculine Masc and feminine Fem. Adjectives, other pronouns and participles inflect for the gender in order to agree with nouns. Finite verb forms inflect for the gender only in the past forms in the third person (both singular and plural).
• Some forms of the verbs کول kawë́l “to do” and کېدل kedë́l “to become” use Variant feature to distinguish Short and Long variants.

Syntax

Core Arguments

• Core arguments (subjects and objects) in Pashto are mostly nouns, pronouns or infinitives (behaving like verbal nouns) in either bare direct case Nom or bare oblique case Acc. The exact use of these cases depends on the inherent transitivity of the verb and the voice and tense used (phenomenon often calld split ergativity)
• The only arguments (i.e. the subjects) of intransitive verbs or of transitive verbs used in the passive voice are always in the direct case Nom.
• For transitive verbs in the active voice holds:
  • The subject in non-past tenses is always in the direct case Nom.
  • The subject in past tenses is always in the oblique case Acc.
  • The object in all tenses is almost always in the direct case Nom.
    • The only exceptions are pronouns of the first and second person singular in non-past tenses, where oblique forms ما mâ “me”, تا tâ “you” are used instead of the direct رۀ zë “I”, تۀ të “you”.
  • The subject usually comes before the object regardless of the case. <!– * Other occurrences of the direct and oblique case are generally accompanied by an adposition, altghough various exceptions of nominals in the bare direct and oblique case, that are not a core argument, may exist:
  • Temporal range (دوه ساعته خوب کوم dwa sâáta xob kawë́m “I sleep for two hours”).
  • Nominal part of a light verb !!!
  • Fixed phrases. –>

Non-verbal Clauses

• The copula verb یم yëm “be” (or more precisely “I am”) is used in most non-verbal clauses.
• The nominal part of the predicate is usually in the direct case Nom
• In the existential non-verbal clauses the word شته šta “there is / there are” is used, but it is tagged VERB

Relations Overview

• The following relation subtypes are used in Pashto:
  • aux:pass
  • nsubj:pass
  • compound:prt
  • orphan:nsubjobj

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Instruction: Include links to language-specific relations definitions if any. —

Treebanks

There is currently no Pashto UD treebank.

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Instruction: Treebank-specific pages are generated automatically from the README file in the treebank repository and from the data in the latest release. Link to the respective *-index.html page in the treebanks folder, using the language code and the treebank code in the file name.

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