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

[Xing Fukun]

Hi Xiaotian,
 Thanks for your translation. I think your translation is correct, thanks!

Best
Fukun




Xing Fukun
2009-11-04



发件人： Xiaotian Guo
发送时间： 2009-11-03 23:27:10
收件人： Fukun Xing
抄送： corpora
主题： Re: [Corpora-List] About Part of Speech in English and Chinese

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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