Talk:Hfst

What is it?

<jacobEo> why use that?
<spectie> because it has a really expressive formalism for languages with complex morphology, like Finnish, Sami and Basque
<jacobEo> could you give an example of the most important thing it can do that lttoolbox cant?
<spectie> stem internal variation

<jacobEo> and how does it do that?
<spectie> by composing different transducers
<spectie> jacobEo, e.g. you have your lexical transducer, then you have your phonological transducer and you compose the two
<spectie> jacobEo, it's like the postgeneration in apertium, but much more integrated

<spectie> it's like taking care of "live^ed" --> "lived" and "jump^ed" --> "jumped"
<spectie> instead of having two paradigms for "live" and "jump" you would have one paradigm
<spectie> +ed
<spectie> then you would have a phonological rule that says "at morpheme boundaries , collapse e^e -> e
<jacobEo> k

<Unhammer> OTOH, if your verb paradigm looks like this:
<Unhammer> ROOT <p2><sg><pri>
<Unhammer> ROOT+t <p2><pl><pri>
<Unhammer> v+ROOT <p1><sg><pri>
<Unhammer> v+ROOT+t <p1><pl><pri>
<Unhammer> da+v+ROOT <p1><sg><fut>
<Unhammer> da+v+ROOT+t <p1><pl><fut>
<Unhammer> you might want to consider hfst ;)
<spectie> yeah :D

<jacobEo> so its much slower, I suppose
<jimregan> nah
<jimregan> slower to compile, sure

<jimregan> you provide definitions for things like what is a vowel, what is a consonant, and where umlauting happens and what it is
<jimregan> ...in nightmarish syntax that escaped from the 70s
<spectie> http://paste2.org/p/532099

 LowerG2   = [
               [
                  (Cns:0)  LCnsPhon7 (Cns:0) LCnsPhon (Cns:0)            ! xy that cannot be G3, since x cannot form xy G3.
               |                                                         ! nijbe,
                  [           ! This section is for 3-cons G2. and for 2cns G2 that share the initial cns with 2cns G3
                     (Cns:0) [:j|:l|:m|:n|:v] (Cns:0) :s :t                  ! S9, 3cns-G2 bäjstov, etc.
                  |
                     (Cns:0) [ :l | :r | :n | :j ]      (Cns:0) :s :k                   ! S9, 3cns-G2 sválskes, etc.
                  |
                     (Cns:0) [  ! 2cns G2 that share the initial cns wit 2cns G3
                                :b (Cns:0) [ :d | :m | :j | :l | :n | :n :j | :r | :s | :t :j | :t :s  ] ! S9, initial b
                                |                                                                        ! gábdev
                                :d (Cns:0) [ :j | :n | :n :j ]                                           ! S7, initial d
                                |                                                                        ! iednev
                                :g (Cns:0) :ŋ                                                            ! S7, initial g
                                |                                                                        ! låg0ŋot
                                :k (Cns:0) [ :n | :k ]                                                   ! S7, initial k
                                |
                                :g (Cns:0) :n                                                            !däggna:degna
                             ]                                                                           !
                             |
                             :r (Cns:0)   :s :j :t                                                    ! S9, rsjt, bårsjtav
                  ]
               ]
                 - [
                     [ d t [s|j] ] |  b b | d d | g g | k [ s | t | t j | t s ]  |
                     f ':0 f | l ':0 l | m ':0 m | n ':0 n | n ':0 n j | ŋ ':0 ŋ | r ':0 r | s ':0 s | s ':0 s j | v ':0 v
                     ]
             ];


<spectie> the formalism is human-hostile
<Unhammer> ^^^ and sed-hostile
<spectie> but really awesome... in the modern and biblical senses of the word :)