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Java Stanford NLP: Part of Speech labels?

Asked 2009-12-02T14:30:50.160
190

The Stanford NLP, demo'd here, gives an output like this:

Colorless/JJ green/JJ ideas/NNS sleep/VBP furiously/RB ./.

What do the Part of Speech tags mean? I am unable to find an official list. Is it Stanford's own system, or are they using universal tags? (What is JJ, for instance?)

Also, when I am iterating through the sentences, looking for nouns, for instance, I end up doing something like checking to see if the tag .contains('N'). This feels pretty weak. Is there a better way to programmatically search for a certain part of speech?

java nlp stanford-nlp part-of-speech
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1 Answer

14

Codified:

/**
 * Represents the English parts-of-speech, encoded using the
 * de facto <a href="http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~treebank/">Penn Treebank
 * Project</a> standard.
 * 
 * @see <a href="ftp://ftp.cis.upenn.edu/pub/treebank/doc/tagguide.ps.gz">Penn Treebank Specification</a>
 */
public enum PartOfSpeech {
  ADJECTIVE( "JJ" ),
  ADJECTIVE_COMPARATIVE( ADJECTIVE + "R" ),
  ADJECTIVE_SUPERLATIVE( ADJECTIVE + "S" ),

  /* This category includes most words that end in -ly as well as degree
   * words like quite, too and very, posthead modi ers like enough and
   * indeed (as in good enough, very well indeed), and negative markers like
   * not, n't and never.
   */
  ADVERB( "RB" ),
  
  /* Adverbs with the comparative ending -er but without a strictly comparative
   * meaning, like <i>later</i> in <i>We can always come by later</i>, should
   * simply be tagged as RB.
   */
  ADVERB_COMPARATIVE( ADVERB + "R" ),
  ADVERB_SUPERLATIVE( ADVERB + "S" ),
  
  /* This category includes how, where, why, etc.
   */
  ADVERB_WH( "W" + ADVERB ),

  /* This category includes and, but, nor, or, yet (as in Y et it's cheap,
   * cheap yet good), as well as the mathematical operators plus, minus, less,
   * times (in the sense of "multiplied by") and over (in the sense of "divided
   * by"), when they are spelled out. <i>For</i> in the sense of "because" is
   * a coordinating conjunction (CC) rather than a subordinating conjunction.
   */
  CONJUNCTION_COORDINATING( "CC" ),
  CONJUNCTION_SUBORDINATING( "IN" ),
  CARDINAL_NUMBER( "CD" ),
  DETERMINER( "DT" ),
  
  /* This category includes which, as well as that when it is used as a
   * relative pronoun.
   */
  DETERMINER_WH( "W" + DETERMINER ),
  EXISTENTIAL_THERE( "EX" ),
answered 2013-03-23T22:12:35.323

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