BNC Part of Speech Tags

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In the BNC World Edition each word or "multiword unit" (such as of course) is "tagged" according to its word-class or part of speech (PoS) with one of the codes reproduced below. "Fused" forms – contractions and possessives written with apostrophe as well as the form cannot and a few others – are "tokenized" as separate units and receive tags as well. PoS tags are assigned automatically by computer and thus are subject to ambiguity (almost 4%), errors (about 1%) and inconsistencies. Consequently some occurrences of the same word form representing the same word class may appear under different PoS codes.

Normalization conventions were adopted for this database to limit its overall size and to allow important patterns to emerge more clearly. For more detailed study of forms and tags which are not distinguished in this database, please consult the British National Corpus directly. In cases of "portemanteau" or ambiguous word tagging, the BNC shows two possible tags; here the more likely first one has been chosen. All capital letters are converted to lower case; proper nouns are recognized by the NP0 tag. Numerals are mapped onto a single "#" regardless of their magnitude or precision. Multiword_units identified by the parser are joined with an underscore into a single "word".  Refer to the normalization conventions for further details on how the database was compiled. These links lead to the BNC's lists of multiword units and fused forms. Geoffrey Leech and Nicholas Smith's Manual to accompany The British National Corpus (Version 2) with Improved Word-class Tagging describes the CLAWS parser and explains the PoS codes in greater detail.


No.PoS
Tag
Description
1AJ0adjective (general or positive) e.g. good, old
2AJCcomparative adjective e.g. better, older
3AJSsuperlative adjective, e.g. best, oldest
4AV0adverb (general, not sub-classified as AVP or AVQ), e.g. often, well, longer, furthest.
5AVPadverb particle, e.g. up, off, out.
6AVQwh-adverb, e.g. when, how, why, whether the word is used interrogatively or to introduce a relative clause.
7CJCcoordinating conjunction, e.g. and, or, but.
8CJSsubordinating conjunction, e.g. although, when.
9CJTthe subordinating conjunction that, when introducing a relative clause, as in the day that follows Christmas.
10CRDcardinal numeral, e.g. one, 3, fifty-five, 6609.
11ORDordinal numeral, e.g. first, sixth, 77th, next, last.
12AT0article, e.g. the, a, an, no.
13DPSpossessive determiner form, e.g. your, their, his.
14DT0general determiner: a determiner which is not a DTQ e.g. this both in This is my house and This house is mine.
15DTQ wh-determiner, e.g. which, what, whose, which, whether used interrogatively or to introduce a relative clause.
16NN0common noun, neutral for number, e.g. aircraft, data, committee.
17NN1singular common noun, e.g. pencil, goose, time, revelation.
18NN2plural common noun, e.g. pencils, geese, times, revelations.
19NP0proper noun, e.g. London, Michael, Mars, IBM.
20PNIindefinite pronoun, e.g. none, everything, one (pronoun), nobody.
21PNPpersonal pronoun, e.g. I, you, them, ours. possessive pronouns such as ours and theirs are included in this category.
22PNQ wh-pronoun, e.g. who, whoever, whom.
23PNXreflexive pronoun, e.g. myself, yourself, itself, ourselves.
24POSthe possessive or genitive marker 's or ', tagged as a distinct word.
25PRFthe preposition of.
26PRPpreposition, other than of, e.g. about, at, in, on behalf of, with. Prepositional phrases like on behalf of or in spite of treated as single words.
27VBBthe present tense forms of the verb be, except for is or 's: am, are 'm, 're, be (subjunctive or imperative), ai (as in ain't).
28VBD the past tense forms of the verb be: was, were.
29VBG -ing form of the verb be: being.
30VBIthe infinitive form of the verb be: be.
31VBNthe past participle form of the verb be: been
32VBZthe -s form of the verb be: is, 's.
33VDBthe finite base form of the verb do: do.
34VDDthe past tense form of the verb do: did.
35VDGthe -ing form of the verb do: doing.
36VDIthe infinitive form of the verb do: do.
37VDNthe past participle form of the verb do: done.
38VDZthe -s form of the verb do: does.
39VHBthe finite base form of the verb have: have, 've.
40VHDthe past tense form of the verb have: had, 'd.
41VHGthe -ing form of the verb have: having.
42VHIthe infinitive form of the verb have: have.
43VHNthe past participle form of the verb have: had.
44VHZthe -s form of the verb have: has, 's.
45VM0modal auxiliary verb, e.g. can, could, will, 'll, 'd, wo (as in won't)
46VVBthe finite base form of lexical verbs, e.g. forget, send, live, return. This tag is used for imperatives and the present subjunctive forms, but not for the infinitive (VVI).
47VVDthe past tense form of lexical verbs, e.g. forgot, sent, lived, returned.
48VVGthe -ing form of lexical verbs, e.g. forgetting, sending, living, returning.
49VVIthe infinitive form of lexical verbs , e.g. forget, send, live, return.
50VVNthe past participle form of lexical verbs, e.g. forgotten, sent, lived, returned.
51VVZthe -s form of lexical verbs, e.g. forgets, sends, lives, returns.
52EX0existential there, the word there appearing in the constructions there is..., there are ....
53ITJinterjection or other isolate, e.g. oh, yes, mhm, wow.
54TO0the infinitive marker to.
55UNCunclassified items which are not appropriately classified as items of the English lexicon.
56XX0the negative particle not or n't.
57ZZ0alphabetical symbols, e.g. A, a, B, b, c, d.
58-*- "wildword" matching any PoS tag (non-standard extension for phrase-frame queries and result sets).

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