# Cat: the Category System

Last update: 2006-07-02 00:15:01 CEST

- Sentences and clauses
- Questions and interrogatives
- Relative clauses and pronouns
- Verb phrases
- Adjectival phrases
- Nouns and noun phrases
- Numerals
- Structural words
- Words of open classes

Produced by gfdoc - a rudimentary GF document generator. (c) Aarne Ranta (aarne@cs.chalmers.se) 2002 under GNU GPL.

The category system is central to the library in the sense that the other modules (`Adjective`, `Adverb`, `Noun`, `Verb` etc) communicate through it. This means that a e.g. a function using `NP`s in `Verb` need not know how `NP`s are constructed in `Noun`: it is enough that both `Verb` and `Noun` use the same type `NP`, which is given here in `Cat`.

Some categories are inherited from `Common`. The reason they are defined there is that they have the same implementation in all languages in the resource (typically, just a string). These categories are `AdA, AdN, AdV, Adv, Ant, CAdv, IAdv, PConj, Phr`, `Pol, SC, Tense, Text, Utt, Voc`.

Moreover, the list categories `ListAdv, ListAP, ListNP, ListS` are defined on `Conjunction` and only used locally there.

        abstract Cat = Common ** {

          cat

## Sentences and clauses

Constructed in Sentence, and also in Idiom.

            S ;     -- declarative sentence                e.g. "she lived here"
            QS ;    -- question                            e.g. "where did she live"
            RS ;    -- relative                            e.g. "in which she lived"
            Cl ;    -- declarative clause, with all tenses e.g. "she looks at this"
            Slash ; -- clause missing NP (S/NP in GPSG)    e.g. "she looks at"
            Imp ;   -- imperative                          e.g. "look at this"

## Questions and interrogatives

Constructed in Question.

            QCl ;   -- question clause, with all tenses    e.g. "why does she walk"
            IP ;    -- interrogative pronoun               e.g. "who"
            IComp ; -- interrogative complement of copula  e.g. "where"
            IDet ;  -- interrogative determiner            e.g. "which"

## Relative clauses and pronouns

Constructed in Relative.

            RCl ;   -- relative clause, with all tenses    e.g. "in which she lives"
            RP ;    -- relative pronoun                    e.g. "in which"

## Verb phrases

Constructed in Verb.

            VP ;    -- verb phrase                         e.g. "is very warm"
            Comp ;  -- complement of copula, such as AP    e.g. "very warm"

## Adjectival phrases

Constructed in Adjective.

            AP ;    -- adjectival phrase                   e.g. "very warm"

## Nouns and noun phrases

Constructed in Noun. Many atomic noun phrases e.g. everybody are constructed in Structural. The determiner structure is

      Predet (QuantSg | QuantPl Num) Ord

as defined in Noun.

            CN ;    -- common noun (without determiner)    e.g. "red house"
            NP ;    -- noun phrase (subject or object)     e.g. "the red house"
            Pron ;  -- personal pronoun                    e.g. "she"
            Det ;   -- determiner phrase                   e.g. "those seven"
            Predet; -- predeterminer (prefixed Quant)      e.g. "all"
            QuantSg;-- quantifier ('nucleus' of sing. Det) e.g. "every"
            QuantPl;-- quantifier ('nucleus' of plur. Det) e.g. "many"
            Quant ; -- quantifier with both sg and pl      e.g. "this/these"
            Num ;   -- cardinal number (used with QuantPl) e.g. "seven"
            Ord ;   -- ordinal number (used in Det)        e.g. "seventh"

## Numerals

Constructed in Numeral.

            Numeral;-- cardinal or ordinal,                e.g. "five/fifth"

## Structural words

Constructed in Structural.

            Conj ;  -- conjunction,                        e.g. "and"
            DConj ; -- distributed conj.                   e.g. "both - and"
            Subj ;  -- subjunction,                        e.g. "if"
            Prep ;  -- preposition, or just case           e.g. "in"

## Words of open classes

These are constructed in Lexicon and in additional lexicon modules.

            V ;     -- one-place verb                      e.g. "sleep"
            V2 ;    -- two-place verb                      e.g. "love"
            V3 ;    -- three-place verb                    e.g. "show"
            VV ;    -- verb-phrase-complement verb         e.g. "want"
            VS ;    -- sentence-complement verb            e.g. "claim"
            VQ ;    -- question-complement verb            e.g. "ask"
            VA ;    -- adjective-complement verb           e.g. "look"
            V2A ;   -- verb with NP and AP complement      e.g. "paint"

            A ;     -- one-place adjective                 e.g. "warm"
            A2 ;    -- two-place adjective                 e.g. "divisible"

            N ;     -- common noun                         e.g. "house"
            N2 ;    -- relational noun                     e.g. "son"
            N3 ;    -- three-place relational noun         e.g. "connection"
            PN ;    -- proper name                         e.g. "Paris"

        }