Tokenization and Part-of-Speech Annotation
Guidelines for Myanmar (Burmese)(Version 0.2, November 2016)
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
The Myanmar (Burmese) language is the official language of the Republic of the Union ofMyanmar. The language is a member of the Lolo-Burmese grouping of the Sino-Tibetanlanguage family. Morphologically, Myanmar is highly analytic with no inflection of morphemes. Morphemes can be combined freely with no changes. Syntactically, Myanmar istypically head-final where the functional dependent morphemes succeeding content independent morphemes and the verb constituent working as the root of a sentence always
comes at the end of a sentence.
This manual provides detailed guidelines for the surface annotation of the Myanmar
texts in Asian language treebank (ALT). The tokenization and part-of-speech (POS) annotation is included in this manual and handled uniformly under an annotation system calledNOVA. The manual is organized as follows. Section 2 is the introduction of the NOVA system used for annotation. Section 3 describes the principles of tokenization. Section 4 describes the details in POS annotation, specifically, annotation for simple words, for affixes,
and for compounds are described respectively. Section 5 provides descriptions on specificand difficult cases in annotation.

2.

NOVA Annotation
NOVA provides four basic tags: “n”, “v”, “a”, and “o” to represent fundamental wordclasses, with further three auxiliary tags to represent numbers, punctuations marks, and tokens with weak syntactic roles. Specific descriptions of the basic and auxiliary tags arelisted in Table 1. Besides the simple tags, a pair of brackets “[” and “]” are further applied
to show multiple tags “working (together) as”. The brackets are used widely in the annotation to represent various linguistic phenomena, e.g., compound, agglutinative suffix, etc.
1Table 1. Basic and auxiliary tags in NOVA
tag descriptionn general nouns, can be subjects or objects of tokens tagged by vv general verbs, can take tokens tagged by n as arguments
a general adjectives, can directly describe or modify tokens tagged by no other modifications or complements for tokens or larger syntactic parts
1 general numbers. general punctuation marks+ a catch-all category, for tokens with weak syntactic roles

3.

Tokenization
The Myanmar texts are split into morphemes in principle, i.e., the text are split into meaningful tokens as small as possible. Stable multi-morpheme expressions may be remained
unsegmented, which is decided by native-speaker annotators’ common-sense and entries
listed in dictionaries. As Myanmar is highly analytic, most single morphemes can betreated as words directly. For complicated expressions applying more than one morpheme
for an entire concept, the brackets are applied to address the integration. The complicatedcases mainly include various compounds and agglutinative suffixes added to stem morphemes, which will be described in the following sections together with POS annotation indetails. Generally, the annotation with brackets is in a form of “x[x1 x2 … xn]x”, wherexk are the tags for each component morpheme and x is the tag for the integrated expression. Here the “x[x1” and “xn]x” are single tags for the initial and final morphemes in theexpression. The usage of brackets are restricted to be shallow, that crossed or nested brackets are avoided.

4.

Part-of-Speech Annotation

4.1.

Word
This sub-section provides descriptions and examples for the usage of basic and auxiliarytags. The usage of brackets for adapting complicated cases are provided in the following
sub-sections. For all the examples illustrated from now on, the tags are attached to correspondent tokens by an underline (“_”).

2The “n” tag is applied for all the nominal tokens, including common nouns and propernouns. Various pronouns are also taken as nominal tokens and annotated by “n”. Specificexamples of the “n” tag are listed in Table 2.
Table 2. Examples of tokens annotated with the “n” tag.
annotated Myanmar

English gloss noteရလဒ်_n resultcommon nounအလူမီနယ
ီ မ်_n aluminumcommon nounကရို ီီးယ ီး_n Korean

proper noun (country)

ဖီဖ _n FIFA

proper noun (organization)

သူ_n hepronoun

်_n Ipronoun

ကျွနတ
်

The “v” tag is applied for all the verbal tokens, including common (dynamic) verbs, stative verbs, and copula. The “a” tag is applied for adjective tokens modifying or describing
a noun. Because the verbal and adjectival stems in Myanmar share an identical set of functional suffixes in morphology, the adjective can be analyzed as stative verbs and thus is nota necessary word class in Myanmar. Strictly, the “v” tag can be applied on all the verbal
and adjectival stems, while the use of “v” and “a” in practice is dependent on the sense of
how “dynamic” the verbal stem is. For the determiners, the “a” tag is applied as they arealways used to modify nominal tokens. Specific examples of the “v” and “a” tags are listed
in Table 3.
Table 3. Examples of tokens annotated with the “v” and “a” tags.
annotated Myanmar English glossnoteသ ီး_v to-go

common verb stemစ ီး_v to-eat

common verb stem

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annotated Myanmar English gloss
ဖဖစ်_v to-beတက င်ီး_a to-be-goodnote
copulastative verb (adjective) stem

လှ_a to-be-beautiful stative verb (adjective) stem
ဤ_a thisမည်သည်_a which

determiner (demonstrative)
determiner (interrogative)

The “o” tag is applied for all the functional tokens, including conjunction, particles, various post-positional nominal, verbal, phrasal, and sentential functional suffixes, and a few
prefixes. The adverb in Myanmar can be analyzed as nominal tokens and thus is not a necessary word class as adjectives. In practice, adverbs can be annotated by “o” or “n”, basedon the annotator’s sense. Generally, the “o” tag can be applied for any ambiguous tokens
with a certain syntactic role (or the “+” tag will be applied). Specific examples of the “o”
tag are listed in Table 4.
Table 4. Examples of tokens annotated with the “o” tag.
annotated Myanmar English gloss note
သပ်_o very

common adverb

နှင_် o andconjunctionတသ ်လည်ီး_o however

conjunction

က_ို o n/a

accusative case-marker (nominal)

တသ _o n/a

attributive marker (verbal)

လည်ီး_o also

particle (phrasal)

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annotated Myanmar English gloss note
၏_o n/aaffirmative marker (sentential)

The three auxiliary tags “1”, “.”, and “+” are used trivially to represent numbers, punctuations marks, and tokens with weak syntactic roles, e.g., interjections. Specific examplesof the three tags are listed in Table 5.
Table 5. Examples of tokens annotated with “1”, “.”, and “+” tags.
annotated Myanmar English gloss note

4.2.

စ်_1 one

common number

၃၀_1 30

Myanmar number scripts

။_. .

Myanmar period markဝီးို _+ wow

interjection for amazing

Agglutinative Affix
According to the previous descriptions, Myanmar functional suffixes (and less used prefixes) are segmented as tokens and annotated by the “o” tag. The bracket annotation is further used for those suffixes having a relatively strong cohesion with the preceding stem.
In general, nominal suffixes, which mainly serve as case-markers, are simply segmented
without using the brackets. The only exception is several plural markers, for which brackets
are used to show the integration with the stem; verbal suffixes, which add various tense andaspect information to stems, are wrapped with bracket to emphases the integration of a verbal constituent; suffixes for larger syntactic constituent as phrasal and sentential ones, aretreated as completely independent tokens, where no brackets are applied. Specific examples on the usage of brackets around agglutinative affixes are listed in Table 6.

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Table 6. Examples on the usage of brackets around agglutinative affixes.
annotated Myanmar

English gloss
English trans.

သူမ_n သည်_oshe n/aသူမ_n က_ို oshe toသူမ_n ၏_oshe ofကတလီး_n[n မ ီး_o]nchild -sသ ီး_v[v သည်_o]v

to-go n/a

သ ီး_v[v ကက_o သည်_o]v

to-go n/aမ_v[o သ ီး_v ဘူီး_o]v

note“သည်” is a nominative case-marker“she”“က”ို is a dative/accusative case-marker“to her”“၏” is a genitive case-marker“of her”“မ ီး” is a plural marker, brackets used“children”“သည်” is a suffix for sentence ending“go (finite)”“ကက” is a suffix for plural subject“go (finite)”
not to-go not“don’t go (finite)”“မ…ဘူီး” is a circumfix for negation

As demonstrated, the brackets may wrap more than two tokens if multiple affixes areused. When the composition of a verbal constituent become complex, the brackets may
cover a relative long range. Table 7 illustrates an example, with one token per row.
Table 7. An example of a complex verbal expression, with a meaning of “were killed”.
annotated Myanmar English gloss
သnote_် v[v to-killa compound verb, mentioned in Sec. 4.4
ဖဖ_် v to-cut
ခံ_v to-receive

a common verb, used to form passive voice

ခ_oa suffix to emphasize past happening
were (approx.)

ကက_oa suffix for plural subject

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annotated Myanmar English gloss
ရ_o have (approx.)
သည်_o]v n/a

4.3.

note
a suffix to emphasize occurrencea suffix for sentence ending

Derivational Affix
Besides the agglutinative affixes (most suffixes) to add further syntactic information (e.g.,case, number, tense, aspect, voice, mood and so on) to stems from specific word class,there are also affixes to change the word classes in derivation. These derivational affixes
are mainly used to form nouns, i.e., used for nominalization. Brackets annotation is generally applied on these affixes to wrap a derived nominal expression. Specific examples on
the usage of brackets around agglutinative affixes are listed in Table 8.
Table 8. Examples on the usage of brackets around derivational affixes.
annotated Myanmarကက ီးစ ီး_n[v မှု_o]nEnglish gloss
English trans.
to-try n/a“attempt”

သင်ကက ီး_n[v ဖခင်ီး _o]nto-teach n/aအ ီးနည်ီး_n[a ခ က်_o]nweak n/a“teaching”“weak point”

note“မှု” is a suffix to change verbs to nouns“ဖခင်ီး” is a suffix to change verbs to nouns“ခ က်” is a suffix to change adjective to nouns

There is an important and frequent prefix “အ” to form nouns in Myanmar. This prefix is
generally kept unsegmented, which will be described in detail in Sec. 5.1.
4.4.

CompoundAs the combination of simple nominal and verbal morphemes is relatively free in Myanmar, there are various patterns of compounds. Generally, one compound will be segmented
and brackets are applied to wrap, if the meaning of each component within the compoundis clear retained and related to the meaning of the entire compound. Specific examples ofnominal, verbal, and adjectival compounds are listed in Table 9.
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Table 9. Examples of nominal, verbal, and adjectival compounds.
annotated Myanmar English gloss

English translation

တရ_n[n ပိုလင်ီး_n]n water bottle“water bottle”

တသ က်_n[v တရ_n]n to-drink water“drinking-water”

စ ီး_n[v တသ က်_v ဆငို _် n]n to-eat to-drink shop
လက်_n[n ပ_် v န ရီ_n]n hand to-wrap clock“restaurant”“wrist watch”

စိုက_် v[v ပ ီး_v]v to-plant to-sew“to cultivate”

အကကံ_v[n တပီး_v]v advice to-give“to suggest”

တလီး_a[a နက်_a]a to-be-heavy to-be-deep“to be profound”ရိုပ်_a[n တဖဖ င_် a]a appearance to-be-straight “to be handsome”

As mentioned in the section of tokenization, the nested brackets are avoided in the annotation. If the compound is further modified by affixes, only the most outside brackets arereserved, as illustrated by the example in Table 7.

5.

Specific Examples

5.1.

Annotation Around Prefix “အ”“အ” is a very common prefix used in Myanmar to address the “nominality” of an expression. The prefix can be used freely for verbal or adjectival stem to transform them into
nouns, and it also appears at the head of many basic nouns. In practice, the “အ” prefix is8

kept together with the following stems to avoid over-segmenting. One reason is the segmentation of “အ” may generate too small tokens even for basic nouns. Another reason is
the meaning of the left component in some nouns has become vague and is not directly related to the entire meaning. Specific examples of nominal tokens with the “အ” prefix are
listed in Table 10.

Table 10. Examples of nominal tokens with the “အ” prefix
annotated Myanmar English gloss noteအစ ီး_n eating“စ ီး” is a verb, meaning “to eat”

အလှ_n beauty“လှ” is an adjective, meaning “beautiful”

အခ န်_n timethe meaning of “ခ န်” is vaguely related to “time”

အလပ်_n roll

the meaning of “လပ်” is vaguely related to “roll”

အတရ င်_n color“တရ င်” means “color” by itself

The “အ” prefix is also applied in specific syntactic structures, such as passive voice forverbs and superlative form for adjectives. It is only segmented in the superlative form foradjectives, where it is actually used in a circumfix form as “အ…ဆံီးို ”. Examples is illustrated in Table 11.

Table 11. Example of the “အ…ဆံီးို ” in superlative adjective.
annotated Myanmar English gloss

noteအလှ_n beauty

derived from adjective “လှ” (“beautiful”)

အဖမင_် n altitude

derived from adjective “ဖမင”် (“high”)
9annotated Myanmar English glossnote

အ_a[o လှ_a ဆံီးို _o]a n/a beautiful -est “most beautiful”, from “လှ”, not “အလှ”အ_a[o ဖမင_် a ဆံီးို _o]a n/a high -est

“highest”, from “ဖမင”် , not “အဖမင”်

A further related issue is around compounds with “အ”-leading nouns, where the prefix
may be dropped in combination. These compounds with an incomplete “အ”-leading nouns
are thus kept together in practice, to avoid over-segmenting. Specific examples of suchnouns are listed in Table 12.

Table 12. Examples of compounds with “အ”-leading nouns
annotated Myanmar English gloss noteရပ်န ီးခ န်_n break-timefrom “ရပ်န ီး” (“to-stop”) and “အခ န်” (“time”)စကကူလပ်_n paper-rollfrom “စကကူ” (“paper”) and “အလပ်” (“roll”)လတမ္ ်တရ င်_n orange-color

5.2.

from “လတမ္ ်” (“orange”) and “အတရ င်” (“color”)“n” or “a” and “v” or “o”
The annotation around functionalized or grammaticalized tokens should depend on the contexts, i.e., the specific role they played. Typical cases are nominal pronouns used as determiners, where “a” should be used instead of “n”, and verbs used as auxiliary roles, where“o” should be used instead of “v”. Specific examples are listed in Table 13.
Table 13. Examples of context-dependent annotation.
annotated Myanmar
ထ_ို n ကသ_oိုEnglish gloss
English trans.
that as“as that”

note“ထ”ို is followed by a suffix, so “n” used10

annotated Myanmar
ထ_ို a အရ _n

English gloss
English trans.
that thing“that thing”

သ ီး_v[v ခ_o သည်_o]v

go already n/aလိုပ်_v[v သ ီး_o မည်_o]v

do will n/a

5.3.

“went”“will do”

note“ထ”ို is followed by a noun, so “a” used“သ ီး” is the verbal stem, so “v[v” used“သ ီး” is modifying “လိုပ်”, so “o” used

Brackets for Post-Positional Adjectives
Although Myanmar is a typical head-final language, many simple adjectival stems can bedirectly added after the nominal expressions they modify to form a relatively “loose nominal compound”. Brackets are used for this phenomenon, just as used for a common compound. Specific examples are listed in Table 14.
Table 14. Examples for brackets used for post-positional adjectives.
annotated Myanmar English gloss English translation
တ5.4.

_n[n ရို ငီး် _a]n forest wild

“wild forest”

တရ_n[n တအီး_a]n water cool

“cool water”

Brackets for Counters
The numbers are generally segmented to separate token. For the number-counter constituents for counting nouns, brackets are used. The number-counter constituents are treated as
adjectival expressions because of modifying nouns, and the counters are generally annotated by “n”, as most of them are derived from grammaticalized nouns. Specific examples
on annotating numbers and counters are listed in Table 15.
Table 15. Examples on annotating numbers and countersannotated Myanmar English glossEnglish translation

လူ_n င ီး_a[1 တယ က်_n]a person five n/a “five people”

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annotated Myanmar English glossစ အိုပ_် n

စ်_a[1 အိုပ_် n]a book one n/aEnglish translation“one book”

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