<div><font face="Verdana" color="#0000ff" size="2">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: left" align="left"><span lang="EN-US" style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体"><font color="#000000">Hi,</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: left" align="left"><span lang="EN-US" style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体"><font color="#000000">Thanks again for all the informative responses to my question. I also have some words to say.</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: left" align="left"><span lang="EN-US" style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体"><font color="#000000">First, I hope there will be some comparisons between English and Chinese or other languages PoS, which maybe helpful to have a deeper understanding of PoS. </font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: left" align="left"><span lang="EN-US" style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体"><font color="#000000">Second, I think there maybe some differences between examples (1) "the church tower" and (2) "the chief executive officer". In (1) the pos of "church" cannot be determined with the context clues alone. But in the dictionary "church" only has one pos so we can determine its pos with a dictionary. But "chief" has two pos in the dictionary, and both of them (noun and adjective) can be placed before a noun. So we can not determine its pos with context and dictionary alone. Maybe we should have a rule for such words: if one word is both noun and adjective and it appears before a noun, then it should be tagged as adjective instead of noun. With such a rule we can make a clear and consistent decision. In this sense the two examples are different. But in (2) no matter what class “chief” is tagged, it will be the modifier of “executive officer”. If the purpose of pos tagging is to parse the sentence it seems that it doesn't matter what class we tag it. In this sense it maybe true that pos is contextual.</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: left" align="left"><span lang="EN-US" style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体"><font color="#000000">But in Chinese it is different. In the example:</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: left" align="left"><font color="#000000"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 宋体; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体; mso-ascii-font-family: Verdana; mso-hansi-font-family: Verdana">一件</span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体"> </span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 宋体; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体; mso-ascii-font-family: Verdana; mso-hansi-font-family: Verdana">包装</span><span lang="EN-US" style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体">/v n </span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 宋体; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体; mso-ascii-font-family: Verdana; mso-hansi-font-family: Verdana">精美</span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体"> </span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 宋体; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体; mso-ascii-font-family: Verdana; mso-hansi-font-family: Verdana">的</span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体"> </span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 宋体; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体; mso-ascii-font-family: Verdana; mso-hansi-font-family: Verdana">礼品</span></font><span lang="EN-US" style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体"><br>
<font color="#000000">(1. a present whose decoration is wonderful 2.a present which is decorated to be wonderful)</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: left" align="left"><font color="#000000"><span lang="EN-US" style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体">If we tag </span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 宋体; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体; mso-ascii-font-family: Verdana; mso-hansi-font-family: Verdana">包装</span><span lang="EN-US" style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体"> as noun, the relation between </span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 宋体; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体; mso-ascii-font-family: Verdana; mso-hansi-font-family: Verdana">包装</span><span lang="EN-US" style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体"> and </span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 宋体; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体; mso-ascii-font-family: Verdana; mso-hansi-font-family: Verdana">精美</span><span lang="EN-US" style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体"> will be Subject and Predicate (the decoration is wonderful). If we tag </span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 宋体; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体; mso-ascii-font-family: Verdana; mso-hansi-font-family: Verdana">包装</span><span lang="EN-US" style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体"> as verb, the relation between </span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 宋体; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体; mso-ascii-font-family: Verdana; mso-hansi-font-family: Verdana">包装</span><span lang="EN-US" style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体"> and </span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 宋体; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体; mso-ascii-font-family: Verdana; mso-hansi-font-family: Verdana">精美</span><span lang="EN-US" style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体"> will be Predicate and Complement (be decorated to be wonderful). Moreover, no matter what tag we put on </span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 宋体; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体; mso-ascii-font-family: Verdana; mso-hansi-font-family: Verdana">包装</span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体"> <span lang="EN-US">and what relations between </span></span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 宋体; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体; mso-ascii-font-family: Verdana; mso-hansi-font-family: Verdana">包装</span><span lang="EN-US" style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体"> and </span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 宋体; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体; mso-ascii-font-family: Verdana; mso-hansi-font-family: Verdana">精美</span><span lang="EN-US" style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体">, the meaning of this phrase is the same. The Chinese speakers never care about those differences. So I call this as vagueness but not ambiguity because we cannot and need not resolve it.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: left" align="left"><span lang="EN-US" style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: 宋体"><font color="#000000">I don't know whether there is such thing in English. It is also welcome to help me to analyze this Chinese phrase.</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><span lang="EN-US"><font color="#000000"> </font></span></p></font></div>
<div>Best regards</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Fukun</div><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div>*******</div>
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<div><font color="#c0c0c0"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Xing Fukun</font></font></div>
<div><font color="#c0c0c0">Phd candidate for Language Engineering<br>Center for Language Information Processing<br>Beijing Language and Cultural University</font></div>
<div><font color="#c0c0c0">Beijing, China<br>北京语言大学语言信息处理研究所<br><font face="Verdana" size="2">2009-11-03</font></font></div></div></div>
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