Syntactic labels

In some language pairs, syntactic function labels are used to improve disambiguation, or allow tighter transfer rules to be written. For example, disambiguating verb phrase co-ordinators from noun phrase co-ordinators lets you write transfer rules to merge two co-ordinated NPs.

Apertium processes left-to-right longest match, so if we have the following sentence,

• John kicked the ball and Mary caught it.

And we have a rule for noun cc noun, then we will get the following analysis,

• John kicked the [ball] and [Mary]

But if we can tag the conjunction as being a global conjunction, then we can avoid lumping the subject of the second sentence with the object of the first sentence.

• [John kicked the ball] and [Mary caught it]

Example

$ echo "Gud talaði øll hesi orð og segði Hann:" | lt-proc fo-is.automorf.bin | cg-proc fo-is.rlx.bin 
  ^Gud/Gud<np><al><m><sg><acc><@OBJ→>/Gud<np><al><m><sg><nom><@SUBJ→>$ 
  ^talaði/tala<vblex><past><p2><sg><@+FMAINV>/tala<vblex><past><p3><sg><@+FMAINV>$ 
  ^øll/allur<prn><qnt><nt><pl><acc><@←OBJ>$ 
  ^hesi/hesin<prn><dem><nt><pl><acc><@←OBJ>$ 
  ^orð/orð<n><nt><sg><acc><ind><@←OBJ>/orð<n><nt><pl><acc><ind><@←OBJ>$ 
  ^og/og<cnjcoo><@CNP>/og<cnjsub><@CVP>$ 
  ^segði/siga<vblex><past><p3><sg><@+FMAINV>$ 
  ^Hann/Prnpers<prn><p3><m><sg><nom><@←SUBJ>$^:/:<sent>$

Here, we could for example have a rule that moves subjects of a finite main verb that are to the right, to the left. e.g. @+FMAINV @←SUBJ to @→SUBJ @+FMAINV as is the order in English.

Standard syntax tags

These are the uniform tags used in many Giellatekno projects.

Tag	Description
@←SUBJ	Subject, head verb to the left
@SUBJ→	Subject, head verb to the right
@←OBJ	Direct object, head verb to the left
@OBJ→	Direct object, head verb to the right
@←IOBJ	Indirect object, head verb to the left
@IOBJ→	Indirect object, head verb to the right
@→N	Noun modifier, head noun to the right
@N←	Noun modifier, head noun to the left
@→A	Adjective modifier, head noun to the right
@A←	Adjective modifier, head noun to the left
@IM
@SPRED	Subject predicate
@←SPRED	Subject predicate, head verb
@SPRED→
@OPRED
@←OPRED
@OPRED→
@+FAUXV	Finite auxiliary verb
@-FAUXV	Non-finite auxiliary verb
@+FMAINV	Finite main verb
@-FMAINV	Non-finite main verb
@-FSUBJ→
@-F←OBJ
@-FOBJ→
@SPRED←OBJ
@-FADVL
@←ADVL	Adverbial modifier, head to the left
@ADVL→	Adverbial modifier, head to the right
@ADVL	Adverbial modifier
@P←	Complement of a preposition
@CNP	Local conjunction or subjunction
@CVP	Conjunction or subjunction that joins finite-verb phrases
@→CS
@CNP-VP	Ambiguous co-ordinator
@APP
@IMV	Infinite main verb
@ICL-ADVL	Non-finite subclause ...
@ICL-AUX←	"right" argument of auxiliary (?)
@ICL-OBJ	Non-finite subclause ...
@ICL-STA	Non-finite subclause ...
@HNOUN	Noun phrase fragment
@X	No analysis

External links

• Syntax tags used in Sámi at giellatekno.uit.no