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Amharic UD
2

UD for Amharic

Tokenization and Word Segmentation

  • In general, surface tokens (orthographic words) are separated by whitespace. Even sentence-terminating punctuation is separated from the last word.
  • Many surface tokens are treated as consisting of multiple syntactic words (multiword tokens).
  • The ATT treebank segments subject agreement morphemes from verbs as independent “syntactic words”, although they are not clitics (their position is fixed with respect to the verb stem, they cannot attach to other words, and they are present even when an overt nominal subject occurs in the sentence, hence they are bound agreement morphemes rather than pronoun clitics).
  • In contrast, object pronouns are clitics. They are also segmented off the verb.

Morphology

Tags

  • Amharic uses 16 of the 17 universal POS categories, including particles (PART). The SYM category does not occur in the present data.
  • TODO: Auxiliaries.
  • There are three main (de)verbal forms, distinguished by the UPOS tag and the value of the VerbForm feature:
    • Finite verb Fin, tagged VERB.
    • Converb Conv, tagged VERB.
    • Verbal noun Vnoun, tagged VERB or NOUN.

Nominal Features

  • The Amharic UD annotation uses language-specific values for Case and Voice.
  • The three values of the Number feature are Sing, Dual, and Plur. For NOUN, PROPN and ADJ, only the Plur value is used if the plural suffix is present; the singular is unmarked and unannotated. Pronouns (PRON) have all three values.
  • Case has 5 possible values: Ben, Mal, Loc, Abl, Ins. It occurs as a lexical feature of adpositions (ADP).

Verbal Features

  • Finite verbs always have one of two values of Mood: Ind or Jus.
  • There are four values of the Voice feature: Trans, Cau, Pass and Rcp. The default active voice is not marked, such verbs omit the feature. Voice is treated as a lexical feature, that is, derived verbs with different voice have a different lemma.

Nonpast tense conjugation 

እነግር	'ənägərə	I tell
ትነግር	tənägərə	you tell (Masc Sing)
ትነግሪ	tənägəri	you tell (Fem Sing)
ይነግር	jənägərə	he tells
ትነግር	tənägərə	she tells
እንነግር	'ənənägərə	we tell
ትነግሩ	tənägəru	you tell (Plur)
ይነግሩ	jənägəru	they tell

Past tense conjugation 

ነገርኩ	nägärəku	I told
ነገርክ	nägärəkə	you told (Masc Sing)
ነገርሽ	nägärəšə	you told (Fem Sing)
ነገረ	nägärä		he told
ነገረች	nägäräčə	she told
ነገርን	nägärənə	we told
ነገራችሁ	nägäračəhu	you told (Plur)
ነገሩ	nägäru		they told

(The suffixes -ku/-k have alternates -hu/-h, respectively.)

Personal Pronouns

Independent forms 

እኔ	'əne		(əne)		PRON	Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs		I
አንተ	'änətä		(antä)		PRON	Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=2|PronType=Prs	you
አንቺ	'änəči		(anči)		PRON	Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=2|PronType=Prs	you
እሱ	'əsu		(əssu)		PRON	Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	he
እሷ	'əsă		(əsswa)		PRON	Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	she
እኛ	'əňa		(əňňa)		PRON	Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs		we
እናንተ	'ənanətä	(ənnantä)	PRON	Number=Plur|Person=2|PronType=Prs		you
እነሱ	'ənäsu		(ənnässu)	PRON	Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs		they

Object clitics

ኝ	ňə	me		ነገረኝ	nägäräňə	he told me
ህ	hə	you (Masc Sing)	ነገርኩህ	nägärəkuhə	I told you
ሽ	šə	you (Fem Sing)	ነገርኩሽ	nägärəkušə	I told you
ው	wə	him		ነገርኩው	nägärəkuwə	I told him
ኣት	'atə	her		ነገርኩዋት	nägärəkuwatə	I told her
ን	nə	us		ነገሩን	nägärunə	they told us
ኣችሁ	'ačəhu	you (Plur)	ነገርናችሁ	nägärənačəhu	we told you
ኣቸው	'ačäwə	them		ነገርናቸው	nägärənačäwə	we told them

Syntax

Core Arguments, Oblique Arguments and Adjuncts

  • Nominal subject (nsubj) is a bare noun phrase (without preposition).
    • The verb morphologically cross-references the person, gender and number of its subject. However, the current annotation in the ATT treebank treats the agreement morphemes as if they were independent syntactic words (pronoun clitics).
    • A subordinate clause may serve as the subject and is labeled csubj.
  • Nominal object (obj) is a bare noun phrase (without preposition).
    • If the object is pronominalized, it gets encliticized to the verb. Unlike the subject agreement morphemes, these really are clitics and should be treated as pronouns.
  • In passive clauses, the subject is labeled with nsubj:pass or csubj:pass, respectively.

Relations Overview

Treebanks

There is 1 Amharic UD treebank: