A tagset is a list of part-of-speech tags (POS tags for short), i.e. labels used to indicate the part of speech and sometimes also other grammatical categories (case, tense etc.) of each token in a text corpus.
Oxford English part-of-speech tagset is available in the Oxford English corpora developed by Oxford University Press.
Oxford English corpus part-of-speech tagset
Example of a tag in the CQL concordance search box: [tag=”AT”] searches all articles, e.g. a, the (note: please make sure that you use straight double quotation marks)
| AT | article a, the, no, every |
| DT | determiner some, this etc. |
| PP$ | possessive determiner his, her, my, etc. |
| TO | auxiliary particle to |
| MD | modal can, will, may, should, etc. |
| BEP | am, are |
| BED | was, were |
| BEG | being |
| BEI | be |
| BEZ | is |
| BEH | been |
| DOZ | auxiliary does |
| DOD | auxiliary did |
| DOP | auxiliary do |
| HVZ | auxiliary has |
| HVP | auxiliary have (finite) |
| HVD | auxiliary had |
| HVG | auxiliary having |
| HVI | auxiliary have (infinitive) |
| AJJ | attributive adjective |
| AJJR | attributive adjective comparative |
| AJJS | attributive adjective superlative |
| PJJ | predicative adjective |
| PJJR | predicative adjective comparative |
| PJJS | predicative adjective superlative |
| AVBB | past (passive) participle used attributively |
| AVBG | present participle used attributively |
| VBP_T | transitive verb present non 3rd sing |
| VBI_T | transitive verb infinitive |
| VBD_T | transitive verb past |
| VBZ_T | transitive verb present 3rd sing |
| VBG_T | transitive verb present participle |
| VBH_T | transitive verb past participle |
| VBB_T | transitive verb passive participle |
| VBP_I | intransitive verb present non 3rd sing |
| VBI_I | intransitive verb infinitive |
| VBD_I | intransitive verb past |
| VBZ_I | intransitive verb present 3rd sing |
| VBG_I | intransitive verb present participle |
| VBH_I | intransitive verb past participle |
| VBP_A | intrans verb taking adjectival complement pres non 3rd sg |
| VBI_A | intrans verb taking adjectival complement infinitive |
| VBD_A | intrans verb taking adjectival complement past |
| VBZ_A | intrans verb taking adjectival complement present 3rd sing |
| VBG_A | intrans verb taking adjectival complement present participle |
| VBH_A | intrans verb taking adjectival complement past participle |
| CC | coordinating conjunction and, but, or etc. |
| C1 | the first element of a compound coordination – both, neither, either |
| PREP | preposition except by or of e.g. in, on, under, beside |
| BY | by |
| OF | of |
| IN | than, though, etc. when not prepositions |
| SC | subordinating conjunction, eg since, although, because |
| CMP | the complementiser that |
| NNS_H | plural head noun |
| NNS_M | plural modifier noun |
| NPS | plural proper head noun |
| NPS_M | plural proper modifier noun |
| NN_H | singular head noun |
| NN_M | singular modifier noun |
| NP | singular proper noun |
| NP_M | singular proper modifier noun |
| NT | noun phrase time adverbial last September, every Friday etc. |
| POS | genitive ‘s, ‘ |
| DP | definite or indefinite pronoun some, this, anyone etc. |
| EX | existential there |
| OPP | objective personal or possessive pronoun me, mine, you, yours, him, his, her, hers, it, them, theirs etc |
| SPP | subjective personal or possessive pronoun I, you, yours, he, his, she, hers, they etc. |
| RPP | reflexive pronoun herself, himself, itself, myself, etc. |
| WP | Wh pronoun what which who that |
| WP$ | whose |
| WRB | Wh adverb why where however etc. |
| WDT | Wh determiner what, which |
| QP | quantifier pronoun much more most few less etc. |
| PDT | pre-determiner all, both, half, such, twice |
| FQ | floated quantifier all, both |
| RB | adverb modifying verb e.g. adoringly, again, ahead |
| RBR | adverb comparative e.g. bigger, better, faster, more |
| RBS | adverb superlative e.g. biggest, best, fastest, most |
| NEG | not |
| RN | else following indefinite pronoun |
| RP | adverbial particle, e.g. across, back, out, over |
| RA | enough, indeed following adjective |
| RC | as following adjective and preceding standard of comparison |
| RD | only, just preceding noun phrase |
| RF | adverb following noun phrase here there alone east etc. |
| RG | adverb following time or measure noun phrase ago, hence etc. |
| RGR | comparative RG earlier, later |
| RI | adverb modifying a following preposition or subord. conj., e.g. anywhere, even, just, partly, right |
| RIR | comparative RI more, less |
| RJ | adverb modifying a following adjective or adverb e.g. abjectly, coldly, so, very |
| RT | temporal adverb then now today |
| RQ | adverb modifying a following numeral only about almost exactly |
| UH | interjection. e.g gosh, heavens, pooh, rats |
| CD1 | the number one |
| CD | numbers five, thirty-two, million, third, fifteenth etc. |
| CD_M | number in modifier position |
| CDS | plurals of numbers fives, millions etc. |
| CDS_M | plural number in modifier position |
| LS | list separator |
| FW | foreign word |
| $ | currency symbol |
| “ | backquotes |
| : | colon, semicolon, dash |
| ” | quote |
| ( | left bracket |
| ) | right bracket |
| , | comma |
| . | full stop, question mark or exclamation mark |
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