🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <C0pGEI.86M@inews.Intel.COM>, bongalon@tcad05 (Ben Bongalon) writes:
>
>In article <memo.851485@cix.compulink.co.uk>, petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
>(Peter Christian) writes:
>|> In-Reply-To: <C0IEnu.Ew4@inews.Intel.COM> bongalon@tcad05.intel.com
>(Ben Bongalon)

>|> > Where can I find references for the names of part-of-speech
>|> > subclasses.  For example,
>|> > 
>|> > for Nouns,
>|> >    (subject,object)     ???
>|> >    (common,proper)      ???
>|> >    (singular,plural)    case(?)
>|> > 
>|> >    Verbs,
>|> >    (past,present,future)        tense(?)
>|> >    (singular,plural)            case(?)
>|> > 
>|> >    ...etc.

<The clarifying questions deleted>

>I plan to use the different "attributes" to classify words during the
>parsing phase of a program that I have been developing (natural language
>processor).  For example, the sentence: "John is tall" will be parsed
>as follows:
>
>John:	part of speech = noun 
>	??? = singular 

The notion singular/plural is called "number," both in nouns and verbs.

>	??? = proper

I think perhaps "class" is a good cover term.  Others may disagree.  Your
mileage no doubt *will* vary.

>is:     part of speech = verb
>	??? = singular
>	tense = present
>
>tall:	part of speech = adj
>
>Obviously I can label the attributes to whatever I want but it would
>be nice if my terminologies are consistent with that of the linguistic
>community.

Now that we know what you were asking about, it's easy:

Subject/object is a syntactic distinction, reflected by "case" (in English,
only in pronouns--he/him, I/me, etc.)

Tense is indeed the term you wanted for the notions past/present/future,
although there are other verbal categories that interact with tense, such as
aspect (continual vs. punctual action, action vs. state, etc.) and mood (uhh,
hard to give a three-word description).

There is a lot of literature on computer-parsing of natural language; you might
want to do a quick survey before going any further with your project, to see
what notions are considered important in such work.  Sometimes the traditional
labels are too broad or to restrictive for computational work.
-- 
Rich Alderson   'I wish life was not so short,' he thought.  'Languages take
                such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
                                                        --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@leland.stanford.edu                              _The Lost Road_