List of symbols

En français · по-русски This page lists the symbols in Apertium used to denote part-of-speech and further morphological features, as well as chunk tags used for more syntactic functions, as well as XML tags.

This is meant to be a glossary of symbol names in alphabetical order with notes. Some of these names are specific to particular packages or language pairs, as not all languages have the same grammatical features (most don't have spatial distinction in articles for example).

If you were wondering what the symbols #, /, @, +, ~ or * mean, read Apertium stream format.

Part-of-speech Categories

Symbol	Gloss	Notes
n	Noun	see 'np' for proper noun
vblex	Standard ("lexical") verb	see also: vbser, vbhaver, vbmod, vaux
v	Standard verb	shortened form of vblex, often used in agglutinative languages
vbmod	Modal verb
vbser	Verb "to be"	from ser (to be)
vbhaver	Verb "to have"	from haver (to have)
vaux	Auxiliary verb	wikipedia
cop	Copula	wikipedia; sometimes verb-like, sometimes not
adj	Adjective
post	Postposition
adv	Adverb
preadv	Pre-adverb
postadv	Post-adverb
mod	Modal word	[1]
det	Determiner	wikipedia
prn	Pronoun	wikipedia
pr	Preposition	wikipedia
num	Numeral
np	Proper noun	From nom propi wikipedia
ij	Interjection	wikipedia
cnjcoo	Co-ordinating conjunction	wikipedia
cnjsub	Sub-ordinating conjunction
cnjadv	Conjunctive adverb	wikipedia
sent	Sentence-ending punctuation	e.g. full stop, question mark
cm	Comma punctuation	,
lquot	Left quote	«
rquot	Right quote	»
lpar	Left parenthesis	(
rpar	Right parenthesis	)

Part-of-speech Sub-categories

Gender

These tags are usually used with nouns, and things that agree/concord with nouns (like adjectives and verbs).

Symbol	Gloss	Notes
f	Feminine
m	Masculine
nt	Neuter
ma	Masculine (animate)	Mostly in Slavic languages
mi	Masculine (inanimate)	Mostly in Slavic languages
mp	Masculine (personal)	in Polish
mn	Masculine or neuter
fn	Feminine or neuter
mf	Masculine or feminine	This is used where the gender can be either masculine or feminine
mfn	Masculine , feminine , neuter	This is used where the gender can be either masculine, feminine or neuter
ut	Common	From utrum, found in Scandinavian languages.
un	Common or neuter	As above, only common or neuter
GD	Gender to be determined

Count/Mass

These tags are usually used with nouns, and things that agree/concord with nouns (like adjectives and verbs).

Symbol	Gloss	Notes
cnt	Countable
unc	Uncountable (mass)

Animacy

These tags are usually used with nouns, and things that agree/concord with nouns (like adjectives and verbs).

Symbol	Gloss	Notes
aa	Animate
an	Animate or inanimate
nn	Inanimate

Adjectives

Symbol	Gloss	Notes
sint	Synthetic	"nice, nicer, nicest" is synthetic. "handsome, more handsome, the most handsome" is not. wikipedia
preadj	Pre-adjective	for languages where most of adjectives are after the noun (ex: French in eo->fr bidix)
preadj_nh	Pre-adjective if not human	according to the noun, the adjective is before or after

Pronoun types

Symbol	Gloss	Notes
pers	Personal
tn	Tónico
detnt	Neuter determiner	POS?
predet	Pre determiner	POS?
atn	Atónico
qnt	Quantifier
ord	Ordinal
obj	Object
subj	Subject
pro	Proclitic
enc	Enclitic
acr	Acronym	Not Pronuon?
rel	Relative
ind	Indefinite
itg	Interrogative
dem	Demonstrative
def	Definite
pos	Possessive
ref	Reflexive
prx	Proximate
dst	Distal

Transitivity

Used for verbs.

Symbol	Gloss	Notes
tv	Transitive	takes direct object in accusative case (used in Turkic)
iv	Intransitive	does not take direct object in accusative case (used in Turkic)
TD	Transitivity to be determined	if the sub-category is [currently] unknown

Inflectional morphology

Number

Note: number can be a sub-category tag too, e.g. with pronouns.

Symbol	Gloss	Notes
sg	Singular
pl	Plural
sp	Singular or plural
du	Dual
ct	Count	see mk-bg
coll	Collective
ND	Number to be determined

Case

Symbol	Gloss	Notes
nom	Nominative
acc	Accusative
dat	Dative
gen	Genitive
dg	Dative and Genitive	in ro-es, discouraged in new developments
voc	Vocative
abl	Ablative	wikipedia
ins	Instrumental or Instructive	wikipedia
loc	Locative	wikipedia
prp	Prepositional	wikipedia
tra	Translative
ill	Illative
ine	Inessive
ade	Adessive
all	Allative
abe	Abessive
ess	Essive
par	Partitive
dis	Distributive
com	Comitative
soc	Sociative
prl	Prolative
ses	Superessive	Hungarian
sub	Sublative	Hungarian
dela	Delative	Hungarian
term	Terminative	Hungarian, Estonian, ...

Voice

Symbol	Gloss	Notes
actv	Active voice
pass	Passive voice	is more used in Turkic.
pasv	Passive voice	is more used in Germanic.
midv	Middle voice
nactv	Non-active voice	See Albanian.
caus	Causative voice	see also #Derivations

Tense and mode

Symbol	Gloss	Notes
pres	Present
pret	Preterite	Preterite
past	Past
imp	Imperative	englishlanguageguide
inf	Infinitive	wikipedia
aor	Aorist	wikipedia A tense in Turkic languages.
pp	Past participle	wikipedia
pp2	Past participle (???)	It's at least used in the Esperanto dictionaries for future active participles, ont (seems quite odd)
pp3	Past participle (???)	It's at least used in the Esperanto dictionaries for past active participles, int (seems quite odd)
pprs	Present participle	Also appears as ppres (deprecated)
ger	Gerund	wikipedia
supn	Supine	wikipedia
pri	Present indicative	see also: pres. wikipedia
pii	Imperfect	from Pretério imperfecto de indicativo wikipedia
fti	Future indicative
fts	Future subjunctive
cni	Conditional	Lot of pairs will probably use cnd or cond...
plu	Pluperfect	In cy-en
pmp	Pluperfect	In es-gl (from Pluscamperfecto)
prs	Present subjunctive	wikipedia
pis	Imperfect subjunctive
ifi	Past definite	from Pretério perfecto o indefinido
aff	Affirmative	wikipedia
itg	Interrogative
neg	Negative
lp	L-participle

Person

Note: person can be a sub-category tag, e.g. with pronouns.

Symbol	Gloss	Notes
p1	First person
p2	Second person
p3	Third person
impers	Impersonal	Sometimes called 'autonomous'

Derivations

Symbol	Gloss	Notes
caus	Causative
ingr	Ingressive	https://nn.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ingressiv

Possession

Symbol	Gloss	Notes
px1sg	First person singular possessive	e.g. in Turkic languages
px2sg	Second person singular possessive	e.g. in Turkic languages
px3sg	Third person singular possessive	e.g. in Turkic languages
px1pl	First person plural possessive	e.g. in Turkic languages
px2pl	Second person plural possessive	e.g. in Turkic languages
px3pl	Third person plural possessive	e.g. in Turkic languages
px3sp	Third person possessive singular or plural	e.g. in Turkic languages

Object marking

e.g. in verbs with both

Symbol	Gloss	Notes
o_sg1	First person singular object
o_sg2	Second person singular object
o_sg3	Third person singular object
o_pl1	First person plural object
o_pl2	Second person plural object
o_pl3	Third person plural object

Proper nouns

Symbol	Gloss	Notes
ant	Anthroponym	wikipedia
top	Toponym	In some language pairs without the locative case this may be loc. Although this should be changed. wikipedia
hyd	Hydronym	wikipedia
cog	Cognomen	In normal use, surnames
org	Organisation
al	Altres	Other, misc.

Adjectives

Symbol	Gloss	Notes
pst	Positive
comp	Comparative	wikipedia
sup	Superlative	wikipedia
attr	Attributive	wikipedia
pred	Predicative	wikipedia

Others

Symbol	Gloss	Notes
web	Links and Emails

See also

• Guidelines for tag assignment (etc.) in Turkic

Chunk tags

Tag	Description
<SN>	Noun phrase / noun group (sintagma nominal)
<SA>	Adjective phrase / adjective group
<SV>	Verb phrase / verb group (sintagma verbal)

XML tags

Note: All XML tags are explained in depth in the PDF documentation, see also the dix.dtd and dix.rng files in the GitHub repository.

XML tag	Means	Appears in XML tags / notes / examples
<dictionary>	Mono- or bilingual dictionary	In files apertium-eo-en.en.dix, apertium-eo-en.eo-en.dix, apertium-eo-en.post-en.dix, apertium-eo-en.post-eo.dix
<alphabet>	Set of characters in the language	In <dictionary>
<sdefs>	Symbol definitions	In <dictionary>
<sdef>	Symbol definition	In <sdefs>. Ex: <sdef n="noun"/>
<pardefs>	Paradigm definitions	In <dictionary>.
<pardef>	Paradigm definition	In <pardefs>.
<section>	A section of the dictionary	In <dictionary>. Ex: <section id="main" type="standard">
<e>	A dictionary entry (a word)	In <section> and in <pardef>.
<i>	Invariant (left and right side)	In <e>. Ex.: <i>beer</i>
<p>	A pair	In <e>.
<l>	Left side (surface form)	In <p>. Ex.: <l>beer</l>
<r>	Right side (lexical unit)	In <p>. Ex.: <r>beer<s n="noun"/><s n="singular"/></r>
<s>	A lexical symbol (noun, adj..)	In <r>, <l> and <i>. Ex.: <s n="noun"/>
<a>	Post-generator wake-up mark	In <r>, <l> and <i>. Ex.: <l><a/>a<s ... (for the a/an rule in English)
<b>	Blank space	In <r>, <l> and <i>. Ex.: <l>you're<b/>welcome<s ...

TODO: Probably there are more. --Jacob Nordfalk 14:47, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Other tags:

<j/> (in stream format #) is to mark multiwords

<t/> and <v/> are only in crossdix
t = template, v = variable
t matches any single tag, v is like + in regexes (0 or more)

<sa/> and <prm/> are only used in metadixes.
'sa' lets you add n optional extra tag, prm is an extra string for the paradigm

Transfer

<clip> tag

See the documentation (pdf), p.144 for more information.

XML attribute value	Means	Appears in attribute	Notes
whole	lemma and grammatical symbols	part
lem	lemma	part
lemh	(inflected) head word of multiword	part
lemq	following queue of multiword	part

See also

• Syntax tags
• Apertium stream format
• FreeMind Apertium PoS