The BNC Basic (C5) Tagset Flashcards
Presentation of
The BNC Basic Tagset
Each tag consists of three characters.
Generally, the first two characters indicate the general part of speech, and the third character is used to indicate a subcategory.
When the most general, unmarked category of a part of speech is indicated, in general the third character is 0. (For example, AJ0 is the tag for the most general class of adjectives.)
1
AJ0
Adjective (general or positive) (e.g. good, old, beautiful)
Examples: able, academic, accessible, accurate, active, actual, additional, adequate, advanced, afraid, African, agricultural, alright, amazing, American, ancient, angry, annual, apparent, appropriate, armed, artificial, artistic, asleep, associated, atomic, attractive, automatic, available, aware, awful, bad, bare, basic, beautiful…
2
AJC
Comparative adjective (e.g. better, older)
Examples: bigger, earlier, faster, greater, harder, higher, larger, longer, lighter, lower, older, poorer, stronger, taller, weaker, wider…
3
AJS
Superlative adjective (e.g. best, oldest)
Example: biggest, cheapest, clearest, cleverest, cutest, fullest, highest, largest, latest, loudest, nearest, nicest, oldest, safest, toughest, warmest, worst, youngest
BNC
British National Corpus
4
AT0
Article (e.g. the, a, an, no) [N.B. no is included among articles, which are defined here as determiner words which typically begin a noun phrase, but which cannot occur as the head of a noun phrase.]
The complete list: a, an, every, no, the
5
AV0
General adverb: an adverb not subclassified as AVP or AVQ (see below) (e.g. often, well, longer (adv.), furthest. [Note that adverbs, unlike adjectives, are not tagged as positive, comparative, or superlative. This is because of the relative rarity of comparative and superlative adverbs.]
Examples: a bit, a little, a lot, absolutely, actually, again, ago, almost, already, also, always, angrily, around, as well, at all, at first, at least, automatically, badly, before, below, both, briefly, carefully, clearly, definitely, desperately, either, enough, entirely, especially, everywhere, for example, frequently, generally, here, hopefully, ideally, inside, instead, instinctively, kindly, maybe, mentally, merely, noisily…
6
AVP
Adverb particle (e.g. up, off, out) [N.B. AVP is used for such “prepositional adverbs”, whether or not they are used idiomatically in a phrasal verb: e.g. in ‘Come out here’ and ‘I can’t hold out any longer’, the same AVP tag is used for out.
The complete list: about, along, around, away, back, by, down, in, off, on, out, over, round, through, under, up
7
AVQ
Wh-adverb (e.g. when, where, how, why, wherever) [The same tag is used, whether the word occurs in interrogative or relative use.]
The complete list of frequent ones: when, whence, whenever, where, whereby, wherein, whereof, wherever, why
8
CJC
Coordinating conjunction (e.g. and, or, but)
The complete list: and, but, nor, or
9
CJS
Subordinating conjunction (e.g. although, when)
Examples: after, albeit, although, as, as far as, as if, as long as, as soon as, because, before, considering, even if,
even though, even when, except, except that, for, if, in case,now that, once, provided, providing, rather than, since, so, supposing, than, though, till, unless, until, when, where, whereas, whether, while
10
CJT
The subordinating conjunction that [N.B. that is tagged CJT when it introduces not only a nominal clause, but also a relative clause, as in ‘the day that follows Christmas’. Some theories treat that here as a relative pronoun, whereas others treat it as a conjunction.We have adopted the latter analysis.]
The complete list: that
11
CRD
Cardinal number (e.g. one, 3, fifty-five, 3609)
12
DPS
Possessive determiner (e.g. your, their, his)
13
DT0
General determiner: i.e. a determiner which is not a DTQ. [Here a determiner is defined as a word which typically occurs either as the first word in a noun phrase, or as the head of a noun phrase. E.g. This is tagged DT0 both in ‘This is my house’ and in ‘This house is mine’.]
Example: all, any, both, each, few, half, many, several, some, that, these, this, those
14
DTQ
Wh-determiner (e.g. which, what, whose, whichever) [The category of determiner here is defined as for DT0 above. These words are tagged as wh-determiners whether they occur in interrogative use or in relative use.]
Example: no matter what, what, whatever, whatsoever, which, whichever, whose
15
EX0
Existential there, i.e. there occurring in the there is … or there are … construction
The complete list: there
16
ITJ
Interjection or other isolate (e.g. oh, yes, mhm, wow)
17
NN0
Common noun, neutral for number (e.g. aircraft, data, committee) [N.B. Singular collective nouns such as committee and team are tagged NN0, on the grounds that they are capable of taking singular or plural agreement with the following verb: e.g. ‘The committee disagrees/disagree’.]
Examples: aircraft, aircraft, cavalry, duck, ethics, graphics, fish, fruit, means, offspring, people, percent, series, species, staff, statistics
18
NN1
Singular common noun (e.g. pencil, goose, time, revelation)
Examples: accident, account, address, advice, aeroplane, angle, animal, answer, apple, architecture, astronomy, atheist, aunt, authority, autism, autobiography, average, baby, bag, ball, bank, bar, beginner, beginning…
19
NN2
Plural common noun (e.g. pencils, geese, times, revelations)
20
NP0
Proper noun (e.g. London, Michael, Mars, IBM) [N.B. the distinction between singular and plural proper nouns is not indicated in the tagset, plural proper nouns being a comparative rarity.]
21
ORD
Ordinal numeral (e.g. first, sixth, 77th, last) . [N.B. The ORD tag is used whether these words are used in a nominal or in an adverbial role. Next and last, as “general ordinals”, are also assigned to this category.]
22
PNI
Indefinite pronoun (e.g. none, everything, one [as pronoun], nobody) [N.B. This tag applies to words which always function as [heads of] noun phrases. Words like some and these, which can also occur before a noun head in an article-like function, are tagged as determiners (see DT0 and AT0 above).]
23
PNP
Personal pronoun (e.g. I, you, them, ours) [Note that possessive pronouns like ours and theirs are tagged as personal pronouns.]
