[Corpora-List] About Part of Speech in English and Chinese

[Xiaotian Guo]

Hi Fukun

Picking up the Chinese phrase, I think how to tag it depends very much on
how it is translated into English, given that analysing Chinese is very much
influenced by the way English (as the most studied language) is analysed. My
first instinct is to tag "包装" as a verb and "精美" as an adverb, as in the
translation "a beautifully packed/packaged gift". Then it also occurs to me
that it makes sense to tag "包装" as a noun and "精美" as an adjective if we
split the phrase into two smaller segments, as in the translation "a gift
whose package is beautiful".

Actually your query reveals a problem with the controversial categorisation
of POS, as is being discussed in this thread already.

Since Chinese is a remote neighbour of the English language and what applies
well to English doesn't necessarily mean it will equally apply to Chinese.
So you don't have to confine yourself to the POS tradition in English. I am
sure computational linguists dealing with Chinese must have felt a need to
create a new set of POS to cater the needs of the different language.

By the way, I think "一件包装精美的礼品" should be strictly translated into "a
gift/present with beautiful package" rather than "a present  with wonderful
decoration", even though it doesn't really matter to your theme of your
enquiry.

Best

Xiaotian Guo

SOAS, The University of London (PT Teaching Fellow)
and
New Vision Language Centre (The Director)
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