Introduction
This is an unorganized collection of notes that should be documented in proper sections later.
Some special constructions
-
In some cases when noun phrases are coordinated with suffix -lA it is not clear whether it is a conjunction or simply ‘commutative/instrumental’ case marking.
(1) Annem-le babam eve gitmiş My_mother-lA my_father house.DAT go.PAST.EVID `My mother and my father went home.' or `My father went home with my mother.' (2) Annem babam-la eve gitmiş.
Coordination is only possible and more likely when the -lA suffix is between the coordinated noun. Case-marking is possible in both configurations (e.g., Diş fırçam-la kardeşim lavaboyu temizlemiş ‘apparently my sister/brother cleaned the sink with my toothbrush’). In some cases it is difficult, or impossible without additional context to disambiguate, Ali-yle Ayşe evlendi can mean ‘Ali and Ayşe got married’ but also ‘Ayşe (but not Leyla) married Ali’. In the first case the relation is
coord
(without acc
) and in the secondnmod
modifying either the predicate or another noun phrase. If the -lA phrase modifies the subject (and it is clearly not a conjunction), we always attach it to the predicate. This avoidsorphan
relations where subject is not expressed in the sentence (see below for other missing heads).Note that as in English PP attachment ambiguity, the
nmod
case can be ambiguous:Ali Ahmet'i teleskopla gördü. Ali Ahmet.ACC telecope-lA see. `Ali saw Ahmet with a telescope'.
With the right context, it is possible that the noun modified with the phrase with -lA is omitted in the sentence.
Dün bir arkadaşı-yla gördüm. Yesterday a friend.P3S-lA see.PAST.1SG `I saw (him/her) with a friend (of him/her)'.
In this case, we connect the phrase with -lA to the predicate with
orphan
relation.In case of coordination, if the second conjunct is a pronoun, it can be omitted.
Annem-le eve gittik. My mother-lA house.DAT go.PAST.1PL 'My mother and I went home'/'I went home with my mother'
-lA in these cases is almost always ambiguous between a case marker and conjunction. If the second component is missing, and the context does not clearly indicate a conjunction, we use
nmod
. Otherwise, we useorphan
. -
Modal adverbs like acaba ‘I wonder’, bakalım ‘let’s see’, yoksa ‘if not’ are linked to the main predicate using
discourse
relation.The relation should also cover yani, işte, şey.
POS tagging related
-
The time adverbs, dün ‘yesterday’, bugün ‘today’, akşam (in the) evening, and so on are marked as nouns in MS treebank, and corresponding words seem to be marked as nouns in English UD too. This conflicts with words with similar usage, e.g., şimdi ‘now’.
Suggestion: Mark dün/bugün/yarın as
NOUN
but use the relation labelnmod:tmod
. This should also cover nominal phrases locative marking referring to time, e.g., eve vardığımda ‘when I arrived home’. - In Turkish, a (rather large) number of postpositions are constructed
by a regular process, where a set of nouns (mostly indicating place
or some sort of abstract relation) are combined with possessive
and case (also with -lA and -CA) suffixes to form postpositions. For
example:
(1) Kitapların ara-sı-nda bulabilirsin. Book.GEN between.POS3SG.LOC find.ABIL.AOR.P2SG `You can find (it/him/her) *between* the books.' (2) Dolabın arka-sı-na düştü Cupboard.GEN back-POS3SG.LOC fall.PAST `It fell *behind* the cupboard.'
Analyzing these as
ADP
seems reasonable, and would be parallel to the analyses in English, and possibly in other languages. However, things get a bit tricky, as the noun that is modified by the postposition may disappear. As in,(3) (Bizim) ön-ümüz-den gidiyor. We.GEN front.POS1PL.ABL go.PAST.PROG `he/she/it is going *in front of* us' (4) (Senin) yer-in-e onu atamışlar. You.GEN place-POS2SG.DAT he.DAT appoint.EVID.P3PL `they appointed him *instead of* you.
Note that the information about the (pro)noun being modified is recoverable from the postposition (using the possessive agreement marker) but the noun phrase is missing.
Alternatives are (1) treating these as regular nouns (METU-Sabancı does so), (2) marking them as the head of the phrase when the noun phrase is missing, and (3) make sure the case marker introduces a new IG, and mark the noun component of the postposition as the head of the postpositional phrase. This is somewhat similar to the noun phrase analysis).
Suggestion: (tentative) follow METU-Sabancı analysis.
-
UD does not seem to have a clear way of marking onomatopoeia. In most cases
X
seems to be a good option.In Turkish, onomatopoeic words may get some suffixes. Most common case is the -lA suffix which derives a noun meaning making a sound like it, e.g., kedi miyav-la-r ‘cat meows’.
In a rather infrequent usage, these words may also get copular suffixes (An example from the web: Gitsin çay falan demlesin, ne o öyle yok havmış da yok miyavmış da bilmemneymiş.. This also affects the analysis of foreign phrases, e.g., Bunun İngilizce orjinali ‘to be or not to be’dir ‘Original English (version) of this is “to be or not to be” (quoting the foreign expressions is common, but not necessarily a standard practice).
Suggestion:
X
, for the case of verb derivation, we don not need to keep the derivation history, so derived verbs will show up as verbs. -
A particular class of complex “pronominals” are formed by possessive suffixes attached to adjectives, determiners and numerals. For example, üç-ü ‘three of them’, sarı-ları ‘the yellow parts (of it)’/’the ones that are yellow’, hiçbir-imiz ‘none of us’. These words behave a lot like a normal pronouns. METU-Sabancı treebank marks these as adjectives that are promoted to nouns, followed by a possessive suffix. TRmorph analyzes as dervied pronouns.
Marking them as pronouns may be interesting as their referrents may potentially be resolved in the linguistic context. On the other hand this seems to be against the current UD classification that lists pronouns as closed class words. (On a related note, one can stretch this to verbal nouns too, e.g., Bu hafta bir sürü kısa öykü yazdım. Daha sonradan yaztıklarım daha guzel oldu. ‘I wrote many short stories today. The ones I wrote later were better’.)
Suggestion: (tentative) Follow METU-Sabancı analysis, unless the resulting pronoun is a lexicalized one.
Features
-
With the same set of TAM markers, tense/aspect/modality changes in subordinated predicates.
Suggestion: keep the features as they are predicted for the predicates of the non-subordinate clauses (it likely that these could be adjusted automatically).
Notes on annotation of specific words
-
eğer an şayet signal a conditional clause, but they are redundant since they always coexist with the compulsoray mood marker on conditional clauses. We mark them as
SCONJ
(following TRmorph), but attach to the head of the conditional clause using thediscourse
relation. -
The words var ‘(something) exists’ and yok ‘(something) does not exist’ are used for formimg “existential sentences”. In this function, these words behave like nominal predicates. Although they do not function like adjectives in general, METU-Sabancı marks them as adjectives.
Suggestion: Follow METU-Sabancı analysis.
-
Another special word is negative particle ‘değil’. It mainly allows negating the nominal predicates. In this function, it behaves similar to copular verbs (ol-, bulun-). METU-Sabancı marks it as a verb, and uses a special relation
NEGATIVE.PARTICLE
.If değil is used as a predicate, we treat it similar to ol-, it is marked as
VERB
with feature assignmentNegative=neg
. If it is used in a copular construction, we use the relationcop
to connect it to the nominal predicate.Arabam mavi değil .\n My car is not blue . cop(mavi, değil)
değil can also be used with verbal predicates, acting as an auxiliary, in this case we relate it to the main verb with relating
aux
.
Öldürecek değiller . \n They are not going to kill (someone) .
aux(öldürecek, değiller)
If *değil* is used to negate a non-predicate, we mark it as `PART`
(again with feature `Negative=neg`), and attach it to the content
word with relation `neg`. (???)
-
olarak (copula ol- + suffix -ArAk) is somewhat different than other uses of the copula. It forms adverbial phrases.
-
Clitic dA (de/da)
In its common use, dA is a discourse connective. In this case, we mark it as
ADV
and attach it to the word/phrase that it modifies (typically the preceding word), and mark asadvmod:emph
, which seems to be used in Czech.When dA is attached to a subordinate predicate, it may look like a subordinating conjunction, Okuyup da anla(ma)mış ‘she did (not) understand (because/although) she read (it)’. Note that in this usage, the suffix -(y)Ip functions as the subordinator. Hence, we mark dA as above.
dA also functions as a coordinating conjunction. If it is used in a construction like Ahmet de Ali de aradı ‘Ahmet and Ali both called’, we still attach the clitic to the preceding word, but mark coordination without a conjunction, in this case the POS tag is
CCONJ
.If it is used with the meaning of ‘but’, e.g., içerim de, arabayı kim kullanacak? ‘I would/can drink, but (then) who will drive?’. In this case, it is connected to head of the conjunction with relation
cc
.A infrequent, but interesting usage of dA is with compound verb forms including suffix -abil. A word/utterance like ara-yabilirim de ‘I may also call’ can alternatively be expressed like araya da bilirim. Note that the first word include part of the suffix ‘-(y)Abil’, and while the last word contains related free morpheme bil- ‘to know’ the expression has nothing to do with the verb bil-. In this case, we analyze second part of the verb as an auxiliary, and attach dA to the first part.
araya da bilirim \n I could call too.
advmod:emph(araya, da)
aux(araya, bilirim)
-
Clitic ki
Either subordinating conjunction or a discourse connective (mark with
advmod:emph
ordiscourse
). (expand this) -
-(y)sA and ise
The suffix -(y)sA or its clictic form ise behave like the copular suffixes or clitics. It mianly forms conditional clauses. Kitabın tamamını okuduysa şaşarım ‘I’d be surprised if she read all of the book’. We treat this case as subordination, mark the relation with
advmod:cond
.Kitabın tamamını okuduysa şaşarım . advcl:cond(şaşarım, okuduysa)
Evde yse yemek yapmıştır . \n He'd have cooked if he is at home.
advcl:cond(yapmıştır, evde)
cop(evde, yse)
When attached to nouns, both forms can also be used as a discouse
connective with the meaning 'as for NOUN'. In this case (following
English UD), we mark the copular suffix/clitic with `case` and use
appropriate relation (likely `nmod`) to relate it to the head.
Arabam sa henüz satılmadı . \ As for my car, it wasn't sold yet.
case(arabam, sa)
nsubjpass(satılmadı, arabam)
-
hani is a word that forms (mostly rhetorical) ‘where’ questions. G&K define it as an interjection. In most cases, there is no other word that indicate that the sentence is a question. Furthermore, it fills in a (pro)noun slot in this usage. In this case, we mark it as
PRON
(withPronType=Int
). In some cases it co-occurs with nerede ‘where’. In that case, it is loosely connected to the sentence structure, so, we mark it asADV
and connect to the predicate with relationdiscourse
. It may also occur without nerede but with a weak connection to the sentence structure. We also mark it as a discourse connective in this usage. (???) -
The reflexive pronoun (kendi and its other forms) is normally complementary to the reflexive verbs. If a verb is reflexive, there normally ‘kendi’ is not needed. However, in some cases it is used, likely for emphasis. In these cases, we mark it as if it is the object of the reflexive ….
Derivations
-
-lA is a productive suffix that derives verbs from nouns and onomatopoeia, e.g., model ‘model-N’, modelle ‘model-V’. It does not seem to be possible for the derived noun to have any dependents, the whole word acts as a single unit.
Suggestion: collapse
-
-lAn is a another productive suffix that derives verbs: hoş-lan, silah-lan, ağaç-lan.
Suggestion: collapse
-
-lIk nominals from nominals. Besides lexicalized forms tuz-luk ‘salt container/shaker’, it is also quite productive. The nominal modified by -lIk may be modified by other words in rare cases, e.g., üç (büyük) araç-lık park yeri ‘parking spot for three big vehicles’.
Suggestion: split. We keep the first IG as the head, and mark it with relation
case
. -
-CI derives nouns from nouns, typically it derives “occupation nouns”, e.g. şarap-çı ‘the wine maker/seller’ but also someone who has a taste/preference for something, so the example could also mean ‘person who prefers wine (over beer)’. Although not very frequent, the non-derived noun can be modified by other words: [kırmızı şarap]-çı ‘person preferring red wine (over white wine)’/’red wine seller’. Similarly, iki [[yağlı güreş]-çi] ‘lit: two [[oil(y) wrestle]-r]’ (the sport is called ‘oil(y) wrestling’ not that the wrestlers are oily (at least not always). Cf. [iki [güçlü [güreş-çi]]] ‘two strong wrestlers’.
Suggestion: split, and mark the final IG as the head of the phrase. We currently use
nmod
between two IGs. -
-DIr attached to time expressions create time adverbials with the approximate meaning of ‘since’ or ‘for’, as in asır-dır ‘for/since centuries’, üç haftadır ‘for three weeks’, uzun yıllar-dır ‘for many years’. In the last two examples the number and the adjective modifies the noun, not the resulting adverbial.
Suggestion: split. We keep the first IG as head, and relate them with
case
, this is somewhat in line with the English UD where ‘since/for’ would be linked withcase
as well. -
-lArI attaches to time expressions, indicating repeating events, hafta sonları kitap okurum ‘I read books in the weekends’, kış geceleri çok üşürdü ‘(s)he used to be/feel very cold in the winter nights’. The construction is ambiguous between noun-phrase and time adverb. That is, geceleri araştıyorum could mean ‘I research (something) at nights’ or ‘I research nights/I do research about nights’. TRmorph has a special (derivational) tag for this construction.
Suggestion: analyze these as normal noun (phrase) but mark with
nmod:tmod
. -
-CA is a multi-functional derivational suffix. When attached to nouns, it forms adverbial phrases: [güvenlik kuvvetleri]-nce ‘by the security forces’. In this usage, -CA may scope over the whole phrase headed by the noun it is attached to. In this usage we split -CA, and connect to the noun with
case
relation (the noun bing the head).