Supplementary Instructions forTokenization and Part-of-Speech Annotation
Guidelines for Myanmar (Burmese)(Version 0.1, March 2017)
Chenchen Ding1, Hnin Thu Zar Aye1,2, Masao Utiyama1,
Win Pa Pa2, Eiichiro Sumita1
1
Advanced Translation Technology Laboratory, ASTREC, NICT, Japan
2
University of Computer Studies, Yangon, Myanmar
chenchen.ding@nict.go.jp
1.

Introduction
This is a supplementary document for Tokenization and Part-of-Speech Annotation Guidelines for Myanmar (Burmese). Further modified NOVA tags and instructions on confusingcases are provided.
The basic NOVA tags used in preliminarily annotated Myanmar texts can be further
modified to add more detailed information. The further introduced tags are listed in table 1.
Generally, a “-” is added to basic NOVA tags to further address the functionality of a token, i.e., to distinguish functional tokens from content tokens. The v- tags is not used, andgeneral particles, case-markers, etc., are all covered by o-. Please refer to the section 5.2 inTokenization and Part-of-Speech Annotation Guidelines for Myanmar (Burmese). A further“/o-” can be attached to n or n- to form tags as “n/o-” or “n-/o-” to annotate contracted genitive case-marker, which is a creak tone that cannot be detached in the process oftokenization.
Table 1. Modified basic tags in NOVA
tag Description
n- general pronouns, including personal, demonstrative, interrogative, and numerala- general determiners, most derived from n- as a direct modifier for n or no- general particles, case-markers, conjunctions, etc., i.e., functional o/o- combined with preceding tags for unbreakable contracted particles.

2.

Modification Examples

1The usage of “n-”, “a-”, “o-”, and “/o-” tags are illustrated in Table 2. For all the examples illustrated, the tags are attached to correspondent tokens by an underline (“_”).
Table 2. Examples of tokens annotated with the “n-”, “a-”, “o-”, and “/o-” tags.
annotated Myanmar

English gloss Noteသူ_n- heသူ_n-[n- တ_o-]nို့
they“တ”ို့ is a plural marker

ကလေး_n[n မ ေး_o-]n children“မ ေး” is a plural marker

သည်_n- မ _o- at here“သည်” is a demonstrative pronoun

သည်_a- ခ_n this chairသူ_n-/oို့
his3.

personal pronoun“သည်” is a demonstrative adjective
pronoun with a contracted genitive case-marker

Specific Examples
Specific cases, which may arise confusion in annotation, is listed here.

-Example 1
Annotated Myanmar: သမေး_n[nတ_o-]nို့English gloss: daughter-sEnglish translation: daughters
note: a nominal constituent with a plural suffix, brackets used

Annotated Myanmar: သမေး_nEnglish gloss: daughter

နစ်_a[1လက်_n]atwoperson

တ_oို့-s

English translation: two daughters
note: a numeral constituent inserted into a noun and a plural suffix,
no brackets for the whole constituent

2

-Example 2
Annotated Myanmar: အရ ရ_n[nEnglish gloss: officerမ ေး_o-တ_o-]nို့-s-sEnglish translation: officers
note: a nominal constituent with double plural suffixes,
brackets used to cover all plural suffixes-Example 3
Annotated Myanmar: အလမရကန်_nEnglish gloss: America

နင_်ို့ o-ဥလရ ပ_n

တ_oို့andEurope-s

English translation: American and Europe
note: a plural suffix added after a coordinating structure,no brackets used

Annotated Myanmar: အတEnglish gloss: Italy_n နင_်ို့် o- ဆွစဇandန်_n နင်င_n[n တ_o-]nို့Switzerland

country-s

English translation: Italy and Switzerland
note: a plural suffix not directly modifying a coordinating structure
brackets used3