Wordnet Topics

This page provides documentation for the parts-of-speech.

Parts of Speech

POS	Name	Extra
n	noun
v	verb
a	adjective
r	adverb
s	adjective satellite
c	conjunction
p	adposition	preposition, postposition, etc.
x	non-referential	particle, classifier, exclamative, etc.
u	unknown

Princeton WordNet defines the original four open class parts of speech: either noun, verb, adjective, or adverb. It later added satellite adjectives, which are in clusters representing a concept that is similar in meaning to the concept represented by its head synset. OMW maps them internally to adjectives.

Conjunctions and adpositions are reserved for extending to new semi-open classes.

x is used for non-referential words such as particles, classifiers, exclamatives, greetings, determiners and so forth.

z is used for phrases, for example to represent phrasets, introduced by Luisa Bentivogli and Emanuele Pianta (2003).
DEPRECATED better to use lexicalized instead.

u Is for automatically produced wordnets that want to add words for which they are not sure of the part-of-speech.

Non-lexicalized Synsets and Senses

We have an optional attribute lexicalized on the synset and sense types, with a boolean value, defaulting to true. This was inspired by the Basque and MultiWordNet projects.

If a synset is marked as lexicalized False then it means it has no lemmas, and this is a deliberate decision on the part of the wordnet builders (but the synset may be included to keep the hierarchy in sync with other projects). For example the synset dedos "fingers and toes" in Spanish would be lexicalized=false in English.

If a sense has lexicalized True then it has been validated in some standard lexicon for the language. If it has lexicalized False, then it is believed to be compositional and only added as an aid to multilingual users (similar to phrasets in multiwordnet). For example harimau anak "young tiger" in the Indonesian synset for tiger cub is lexicalized=false, or dedos pedas "foot finger-and-toes" in the synset for toe in Spanish.

The original documentation for the parts of speech in the Princeton Wordnet is here. We have added some new possibilities.