Basic introduction to parts of speech

Specific questions

Pronouns and determiners

A frequent question we get is "What is the difference between a pronoun and a determiner? You tag 'this' as two parts of speech: demonstrative pronoun and demonstrative determiner. I just don't get it, it always translates the same!"

The simplest way to explain this is to give two example sentences,

a) I was talking about this cat.

b) This is the cat I was talking about.

In the first case, the this is modifying the following noun cat. In the second case it is substituting the noun phrase this cat. Where the word this is used as a modifier in Apertium we call it a determiner, and where it is used to substitute a noun phrase we call it a pronoun.

This is not always necessarily relevant for translation, for example in Icelandic it is translated as þessi in both cases. However, it might still be relevant for transfer, for example when the pronoun is a determiner we may want to include it in concordance operations (e.g. for gender, number, and case) with the head noun, but when it is a pronoun we might not.

a) I will give this to the cat

    Ég skal gefa kettinum þetta.

b) I will give it to this cat

    Ég skal gefa þessum ketti það.

In (b) the determiner þessi "this" agrees in gender, number and case with the indirect object köttur "cat", whereas in (a), it the pronoun þessi functions as the direct object and agrees with its antecedent. You could probably just tag them both as a pronoun and then distinguish in transfer, but it's easier, and more portable (to languages where there is a difference).

Sub-ordinating and co-ordinating conjunctions

• cnjsub = subordinating conjunction "he doesn't fly _because_ he doesn't like to"
• cnjcoo = co-ordinating conjunction "he doesn't fly _and_ he doesn't like to"
• cnjadv = adverbial conjunction "he doesn't want to _so_ he doesn't fly"

Improve this description --Francis Tyers

Cases and post-positions

Things to think about:

• Is there agreement/concordance ?
• Orthography
• Hungarian: Note on terminology

Specific words

each

• Determiner: Each day I get out of bed
• Pronoun: They will each get