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Part-of-speech (POS) Tagging in Natural Language Processing (NLP)

Writer's picture: samuel blacksamuel black

Updated: Jan 9, 2024

In this post we will briefly disscuss about part of speech tagging as an application of Natural Language Processing


Natural language processing (NLP) tools have sparked a great deal of interest due to rapid improvements in information and communications technologies. As a result, many different NLP tools are being produced. However, there are many challenges for developing efficient and effective NLP tools that accurately process natural languages. One such tool is part of speech (POS) tagging, which tags a particular sentence or words in a paragraph by looking at the context of the sentence/words inside the paragraph. Part-of-speech (POS) tagging is a popular Natural Language Processing method in which we pay emphasis on categorising words present in a textual corpora with their corresponding part of speech tag, depending on the definition of the word and its context. Part-of-speech tags describe the characteristic structure of lexical terms within a sentence or text therefore we can use them for making assumptions about semantics. A list of these tags is given below:

1.	CC	Coordinating conjunction	
2.	CD	Cardinal number	
3.	DT	Determiner	
4.	EX	Existential there	
5.	FW	Foreign word	
6.	IN	Preposition or subordinating conjunction	
7.	JJ	Adjective	
8.	JJR	Adjective, comparative	
9.	JJS	Adjective, superlative	
10.	LS	List item marker	
11.	MD	Modal	
12.	NN	Noun, singular or mass	
13.	NNS	Noun, plural	
14.	NNP	Proper noun, singular	
15.	NNPS Proper noun, plural	
16.	PDT	Predeterminer	
17.	POS	Possessive ending	
18.	PRP	Personal pronoun	
19.	PRP$	Possessive pronoun	
20.	RB	Adverb	
21.	RBR	Adverb, comparative	
22.	RBS	Adverb, superlative	
23.	RP	Particle	
24.	SYM	Symbol	
25.	TO	to	
26.	UH	Interjection	
27.	VB	Verb, base form	
28.	VBD	Verb, past tense
29.	VBG	Verb, gerund or present participle	
30.	VBN	Verb, past participle	
31.	VBP	Verb, non-3rd person singular present	
32.	VBZ	Verb, 3rd person singular present	
33.	WDT	Wh-determiner	
34.	WP	Wh-pronoun	
35.	WP$	Possessive wh-pronoun	
36.	WRB	Wh-adverb

In Parts of speech tagging we label each word in a sentence with its corresponding part of speech (POS), such as provided above. These tags helps in understanding the syntactic structure of a sentence and plays a vital role in various NLP tasks. Different techniques like statistical models, rule-based systems, and machine learning algorithms are commonly used for accurate parts of speech tagging.


Parts of Speech Tagging use cases

Parts of speech tagging serves as a foundational step in various Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks, enhancing language understanding and enabling more advanced analysis. Some applications include:


  • Parsing and Syntax Analysis: POS tagging assists in syntactic parsing by identifying the relationships between words in a sentence. It helps in understanding the structure and grammar of the text.


  • Information Retrieval: It aids in more accurate search results by understanding the context of words in documents, making search queries more precise.


  • Named Entity Recognition (NER): POS tagging helps identify parts of speech that are indicative of named entities, such as proper nouns (names of people, organizations, locations), aiding in NER tasks.


  • Text-to-Speech (TTS) Systems: It assists in converting text to speech by providing information about the pronunciation and intonation based on the parts of speech.


  • Machine Translation: Accurate POS tagging helps improve the accuracy of translation systems by preserving the syntactic structure of sentences across languages.


  • Sentiment Analysis: Understanding the parts of speech can provide insights into the sentiment of a text, as different POS often carry emotional weight.


  • Question Answering Systems: POS tagging helps in understanding the syntactic structure of questions, aiding in identifying the key components required for generating accurate answers.


  • Text Summarization: POS tagging assists in understanding the role of words in a sentence, which is beneficial in extracting the most important information for summarisation tasks.


  • Grammar Checking: It aids in grammar correction tools by identifying parts of speech that might be incorrectly used or structured in a sentence.


  • Information Extraction: POS tagging helps extract specific information from text by identifying relevant parts of speech, making it useful for extracting structured data from unstructured text.


In essence, accurate parts of speech tagging lay the groundwork for higher-level language understanding and enable a wide range of NLP applications to work more effectively and precisely.

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