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Preliminary Recommendations

Gender, Number and Case

In Greek, adjectives must agree in Gender, Number and Case with the nouns they modify.

The majority of Greek adjectives is inflected according to paradigms that form distinct forms for all three genders. A few adjectives (e.g. ending in `-ys', `-ys' and `-es') share the same form for the masculine and the feminine gender, and another category (mainly foreign words) shares the same form for all genders:

`kalos', `kaly', `kalo'
but
`eutuhys', `eutuhys', `eutuhes'
and
`roz', `roz', `roz'

Although, for nouns sharing the same form for the masculine and feminine gender, we use the value masc-fem, we have decided not to use it for adjectives for two reasons:

  1. Not all inflected forms of the masculine and feminine gender coincide; and
  2. In the majority of cases, the value can be disambiguated during corpus annotation on the basis of the noun they refer to:

    ``O Ghiannys einai eutuhys'' -- masculine.
    ``Y Maria einai eutuhys'' -- feminine.

On the other hand, we introduce the value common for those adjectives that have a common form in all genders. No disambiguation is attempted at this point during corpus processing, as it would complicate the procedure too much.

In relation to Number and Case, the values invariant and indeclinable respectively are used for adjectives that retain the same form irrespective of gender, number and case. As in the case of nouns, these are foreign words which have entered the Greek language without having adopted the inflectional system, and their disambiguation relies on context.

Attribute Value Gr. example Gr. tag
Gender masculine kalos AjBaMa
feminine kaly AjBaFe
neuter kalo AjBaNe
l-spec common roz AjBaCo

Attribute Value Gr. example Gr. tag
Number singular kalos AjBaMaSg
plural kaloi AjBaMaPl
l-spec invariant roz AjBaMaSgNv

Attribute Value Gr. example Gr. tag
Case nom kalos AjBaMaSgNm
gen kalou AjBaMaSgGe
acc kalo AjBaMaSgAc
dat kalw AjBaMaSgDt
l-spec voc kale AjBaMaSgVo
l-spec indcl roz AjBaMaNvIc


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Next: Use Up: Application to Greek Previous: Degree