nor/CCONJ: Feature to indicate negation?

[nschneid]

English "nor" (and arguably, "neither" when paired with "nor") are coordinating conjunctions that express negation.

Should this be indicated in features? Neither the PronType=Neg nor the Polarity=Neg docs mention CCONJ words as possible targets. The former uses phrasing like "negative pronoun, determiner or adverb" and "pronominal words"—is "nor" a pronominal word? If not, maybe Polarity=Neg is the right solution.

[amir-zeldes]

I think it's not PronType=anything because it's not a pronoun. As for Polarity=Neg, I'd be all for it, but as I recall, the Core Group voted against anything in English being Polarity=Neg except for "not" in UniversalDependencies/UD_English-EWT#526

So while I also definitely think Polarity=Neg is appropriate, it would also be appropriate for negation with "no", "non" as a token, and arguably morphological negation of adjectives within tokens (un-). But since it's been ruled on quite recently, I imagine the answer is still that it only applies to "not", making it a non-useful (not a useful?) feature in English - see the thread above for discussion.

[Stormur]

I do not see reasons not to annotate it and all other negative words with Polarity=Neg. What was the rationale for English treebanks?. But just as a comment, I notice that this feature is eschewed in more than one treebank.

By the way, there is a big "confusion area" in the guidelines between PronType=Neg and Polarity=Neg. I remember that in the first times I had real difficulties in trying to wrap my head around them. But in the end, it appears that PronType=Neg does not really make sense (a pronoun etc. is always a type, and can also be negative), so I would not see it as an alternative.

[nschneid]

I recall, the Core Group voted against anything in English being Polarity=Neg except for "not" in UniversalDependencies/UD_English-EWT#526

Polarity=Neg is documented in English for both "not" and interjection "no": https://universaldependencies.org/en/feat/Polarity.html Determiner "no" is PronType=Neg (recall "PronType" is not literally just pronouns, but also pro-forms generally). The core group ruled out using Polarity for content lexemes (incl. those with derivational morphology), preferring to restrict it to the grammatical as opposed to lexical expressions of negation. Because "nor" is a function word I think it is fair game under this principle.

[amir-zeldes]

OK, happy to discuss it with the group and I'd definitely support more use of Polarity in English. Currently it's not useful at all IMO.

[nschneid]

The Core Group has no objection to Polarity=Neg for neither/CCONJ and nor/CCONJ. Updated the validator to allow it; still need to document and implement across treebanks.

[amir-zeldes]

What about as a determiner in "neither one"?

[nschneid]

That's PronType=Neg

[amir-zeldes]

Oh right!