Talk:Welsh to English

Note: Comments should not include '=' as it confuses the Wiki templating system (as I just found out myself)

Note 2: Suggestions for part-of-speech disambiguation should go here.

OK, I'll try, but I'm not entirely sure of the distinction. some of the stuff at the end of that page, for instance, is covered here. - Donnek

Note 3: Comments should not include the '|' symbol either, at least within double quotes, since it too confuses the wiki.

English to Welsh

Macros

This will contain chunks of rules that we need to split out to make them more maintainable

Notes for areas to be covered

A sort of scratchpad / todo list, based on things that come up when putting phrases into the testing webform.

Conjunctive genitive

gwallt yr eneth - *hair the girl - the hair of the girl - the girl's hair

llaw y bachgen - *hand the boy - the hand of the boy - the boy's hand

Note that the noun phrase in English is definite - contrast "merch y meddyg" (the doctor's daughter) and "merch meddyg" (a doctor's daughter).

For an English phrase 
of the type "def + noun1 + of + def + noun2"
or of the type "def + noun2 + 's + noun1"
convert in Welsh to "noun1 + def + noun2".

Here can noun1 be a simple noun, or can it be a noun phrase? For example "the red cat of the young boy" - Francis Tyers

e.g.

For the pattern det.def + noun1 + of + det.def + noun2:

Output noun1 + det.def + noun2

Yes, as long as you like, eg,

cath goch bachgen bach merch ifanc bert rheolwr y banc mawr du

the red cat of the little boy of the pretty young daughter of the manager of the big black bank

It's only the last NP of the sequence that gets the def.det. Donnek

Ok, so this requires a three level rule.

t1x -> t2x SN_(the cat red) of_(of) SN_(the boy little) of_(of) SN_(the daughter young pretty) of_(of) SN_(the manager) of_(of) SN_(the bank big black)

t2x -> t3x SN_(the cat red) SN_(the boy little) SN_(the daughter young pretty) SN_(the manager) SN_(the bank big black)

t3x -> gen (cat red boy little daughter young pretty manager the bank big black)

What I'll do for now is get the chunks working ('SN' -- noun phrase, and 'of'), for values of 'noun', 'det noun', 'det adj noun', 'det adj adj noun', 'det adj adj adj noun', etc. Then look at taking care of more frequent cases (e.g. the first example). Francis Tyers

For a Welsh phrase of the type "!det + noun1 + def + noun2"
convert in English to "def + noun1 + of + def + noun2"
or to "def + noun2 + 's + noun1".

The second noun is probably historically a genitive, but it has lost all case markers. The equivalent in Irish would be:

ceann an chapaill - *head the of-horse (gen) - the head of the horse - the horse's head

ceann capaill - *head of-horse (gen) - the head of a horse - a horse's head

"was"

"roedd" ([he/she/it] was) is unknown, but I seem to remember adding entries for "to be" to the dixes in the mists of time. Was I dreaming? (roedd <- yr + oedd)

There are entries for 'bod', but 'roedd' doesn't get processed as all of the 'bod' entries start with 'b' (see this link). I will need to fix this in the analyser. If I understand you correctly, 'roedd' is a contraction of 'yr' (determiner ...) + 'oedd' (verb 'bod', past tense ...)? Francis Tyers

Some serious errors have crept in to those entries. I've sent an amended version to you by email. You're right - roedd -> yr + oedd, but in the amended version I've sent, I've put (e.g.) "roedd" and "oedd" as alternate forms, because "Roedd" is the spoken form, and even in written Welsh you hardly ever see "Yr oedd" nowadays. Donnek

The "bod" paradigm should now be all ok, there remains however to choose the restrictions (e.g. which forms we will generate for each set of tags). - Francis Tyers

the boy was in the garden -> *y bachgen bu yn yr ardd - bu'r bachgen yn yr ardd

Almost correct, except for word-order, and the fact that the preterite is being used instead of the imperfect ("roedd y bachgen yn yr ardd"). The preterite needs to be marked as only being used in written Welsh, and to have a lower likelihood than the imperfect. This is too rough a rule, but would do for the time being.

Marking and word-order

The above brings up a useful point about this. If the standard VSO sequence is changed to SVO (ie unchanged from the English standard), this is a marked pattern, conveying a relative clause. In written Welsh, the verb will be preceded by "a" + soft mutation, but in spoken Welsh the "a" usually disappears.

y bachgen [a] fu yn yr ardd ddydd Llun (the boy who was in the garden on Monday)

yr eneth [a] welodd y ci (the girl who saw the dog)

contrast

gwelodd yr eneth y ci (the girl saw the dog)

Hmmm. Relative clauses are going to be difficult.

For Welsh pattern "noun + a + soft-mutated_verb"
output English pattern "noun + who/which + verb".

The dictionary only has 'a' down as a co-ordinating conjunction "and", does it have other meanings? - Francis Tyers

Yes. "a" - relative "who, which" in a relative clause where the subject is the same as that of the main clause, and "a" - interrogative pre-verbal particle (eg a weles ti hwnna? - did you see that?). Both are followed by soft mutation. Note that interrogative "a" is usually omitted in speech, leaving only the mutation. - Donnek

"yn" as stative

For Welsh pattern "yn + adj"
output English "adj"

There is a problem here in that this pattern can also be an adverb:

siaradodd yn hapus am ei fywyd - he talked happily about his life

For English pattern "adverb_formed_from_adj + ly"
output Welsh "yn + adj"

This second one will be difficult to do, as we don't have adverbs in the English dictionary marked as derivatives from adjectives or not. - Francis Tyers

OK. Unfortunately, since "yn + adj" can be either an adj or an adv in Welsh, I don't even mark them separately in Eurfa - perhaps I should. Would one option be to replicate all the Welsh adj entries in Apertium by preceding them with "yn + space", and adding "-ly" to the English side? This would get the EW direction, but I don't know whether it would cause problems on the WE direction. - Donnek

The above rule has been applied (way!), but does not catch mutated adjectives ("yn" causes soft mutation):

*tyfodd fo yn mawr -> he grew big

tyfodd fo yn fawr -> *he grew in *fawr

This was a dictionary error, 'fawr' did not have the initial-m paradigm. Now added. - Francis Tyers

OK - there are a couple of others I've come across: mwy (fwy), bach (fach), gwyn (wyn). there may be a few more. - Donnek

Taken care of the first two, 'gwyn' doesn't seem to appear in the dictionary (only as 'complaint'). does it inflect at all? - Francis Tyers

LOL! There are some obvious words not in Eurfa, tut tut to me! gwyn (white), *gwen (in practice "wen", fem), gwynion (occasionally, plural), gwynnach (whiter), gwynnaf (whitest). There may be fem comp and super forms too, but we can ignore those. By the way, "da" also has this problem too. - Donnek

 :) -- Ok, I've added gwyn/gwnnach/gwynnaf for now, adding the genders would probably mess up some rules and these are probably fairly low frequency and can be taken care of later. - Francis Tyers

We could also extend this to nouns:

roedd hi'n waith anodd -> *was in ~a #difficult<adj><sint> work - (it) was hard work

(though "work" gets lost in the second proc run).

For Welsh pattern "yn + non-place noun-phrase"
output English "noun-phrase"

This is a bit complex. There are two "yn"s in Welsh: "yn" showing state or condition, or extension in time (yn hapus - happy; yn mynd - going), and "yn" the preposition showing location in a specific place (yn y tŷ - in the house (contrast: mewn tŷ - in a house); yn Nolgellau - in Dolgellau). (They are probably related historically.) The stative "yn" soft-mutates nouns and adjectives, but not verbs; the location "yn" nasal-mutates (and changes to "ym" to match an initial "m" in the following noun, eg ym Mangor - in Bangor).

So - as it stands, the above will clash with 1.3.10 (change prep+noun to prep+det.indef+noun), even though "yn" the preposition will never occur before a non-specific noun (it must have specificity), and even though the above is not actually "yn" the preposition (it's "yn" the stative). We can't use the stative soft-mutation to decide, because (a) that doesn't apply to some consonant initials, and (b) other prepositions cause mutation too, and it would be overkill to check for each one. So the easiest thing is to adjust 1.3.10 to exclude "yn" as one of the prepositions that will be caught. Is it easy? I don't know :-)

I've added the yn "stative" to the analyser as well as the yn "preposition", but until we retrain the tagger it will not pick the former. If you could think of any rules that will choose the right one in a given context it would help (for ideas on the kinds of restrictions to these rules, see here and here). - Francis Tyers

The simplest would be:

Welsh word "yn" is a preposition

when it is followed by "det.def" or by a capitalised word

otherwise it is a stative

That may not be perfect, but it is good enough. I'll bear in mind the tagger pages, but it may take a while to get to that stage. - Donnek

Preferential choice between noun and verbform

atebodd hi'r cwestiwn -> *answered shethe #hold an inquiry - she answered the question

proc selects 'cwestiwn' (question) - correct - and 1p pl imperative of 'cwestio' (an infrequent verb for 'hold an inquiry'). The 1p pl present would also have been a possibility, and indeed a more likely one. tagger selects the second of these.

Not sure how widespread this would be, but the tagger should give precedence to the noun choice whenever the verb form is preceded by 'y':

For Welsh pattern "{y,yr,'r} + word_tagged_as_either_noun_or_verb"
output "{y,yr,'r} + noun"

This is not perfect, because "y | yr" can also be an indirect relative clause pronoun before a verb, but it would catch most things until we can resolve the latter point.

gwelodd y dyn y llyfr -> *the man saw the books - the man saw the book

This is similar, but is tricksy because it is superficially correct apart from the plural. But in fact, tagger is reading "llyfr" as pres 3p sing of "llyfru" (to book). Apart from being infrequent, and therefore much less likely to appear ("bwcio" would be the usual word), Eurfa has "llyfra" as the pres 3p sing, so there may be a paradigm problem too. The above rule would throw out the verb in the meantime.

It is currently using the aberth/u__vblex paradigm (see output here). Is this incorrect? - Francis Tyers

The problem is that "aberthu", apart from the 'regular' "abertha" also has a written "aberth". So yes, it probably is incorrect. The problem is that a lot of less common verbs are very rarely inflected. It might have been better to use something like "gwenu" or "siomi". In the meantime, perhaps just changing "aberth" to "abertha" in the pres 3p sing will do. - Donnek

Number agreement of verb

I added 'rabbits' to the dictionary, but the problem of unknown words and phrase movement is one we're experiencing in Basque too... - Francis Tyers

OK - so it's basically an issue that you can't do much about until the word is logged. Hmm. I suppose that makes sense, since Apertium can't figure out what to do with something until it knows what it should do with it ... In a practical sense, this is going to be problematic if we demo Apertium using unseen text. Is there any way of doing some blind choosing, eg

if this word is

preceded by [y,yr,'r]

we will assume it's a noun

preceded by yn

we will assume it's a verb

unless a verb has been identified in the current phrase

in which case we'll assume it's an adjective

This might break Apertium - I don't know. In theory, though, we might be able to get relative probabilities for a particular sequences from a corpus. - Donnek

I'd be reluctant to add one as we'd not be able to get the translation, on the other hand, it wouldn't cause messing up of word order. It's an open problem, and we're thinking about it :) - Francis Tyers

Prepositional noun phrase should not be a subject

cerddodd fo i'r dref -> he walked in the town

Fine, except that the preposition "i" should really be glossed as "to" ("yn y dref" would be "in the town")

Contrast:

cerddodd i'r dref -> *the town walked in - [he/she] walked to the town

Welsh pattern "prep + det.def + noun" is never a subject phrase

and therefore the "det.def + noun" section shouldn't be shifted. (I can't think of any exceptions to this, but there may be one.)

There was a rule to do this, I've commented it out, I think there was a reason for it, but I can't recall now. I've run the regression tests below and it doesn't seem to have broken anything. Regarding the preposition, should I change "i" to be "to" instead of "in" ? - Francis Tyers

Re "i", yes, change it to "to". - Donnek

The problem here was the dictionary only had i'r → yn+yr... i've added i'r → i+yr and now it is picking the right one, although I don't know what will happen for other contexts... - Francis Tyers

Not sure where that would have come from. The only vaguely relevant thing I can think of is "i mewn i" (into). - Donnek

allan i'r cyfarfod -> *the meeting #exit<vblex><pres><p3> in - out to the meeting

This is similar - "in" should be "to", and should be kept with "the meeting".

However, there is another issue here, which is in effect the same as "Preferential choice between noun and verbform" above. In this case, the verb "allanu" (to exit) is being chosen instead of the much more likely "allan" (out).

roedd o ar dy lyfr -> *was of on your books - it was on your book

1.3.9 would deal with "of", and 1.3.6 would deal with "books". Subject shift would then produce a reasonable translation.

However:

roedd ar dy lyfr -> *your #be<vbser><past><p3> on books - (it) was on your book

Omitting the subject pronoun can happen quite frequently in speech if the subject has already been mentioned. The <sg> tag gets lost at interchunk, which means the verb can't be conjugated (this came up somewhere else, but I think it's been taken off the page - maybe it would be better just to mark the issue heading as "addressed" rather than delete it). But there is an additional issue, in that the possessive pronoun is getting treated as the subject and moved separately. So maybe we need a broader rule to say that "prep + det.def/pr.poss/whatever + noun" is an indivisible chunk, and must be dealt with as a block. No part of it would be moved in this case anyway.

Regarding page cleanup, ok. perhaps having a separate section, and then moving sections down would be a good idea. - Francis Tyers

It would also be nice in the longer term to fill in the pronoun if it is omitted.

For Welsh pattern "verb + non-subject noun phrase"
output English "verb + pronoun agreeing in number and person + non-subject noun phrase"

The NSNP could be a prepositional phrase (marked by an initial preposition), or an object phrase (marked with initial soft mutation).

"-ing" as "yn + verb"

For English pattern "subject + verb<vbser> + verb + ing"
output for Welsh "verb<vbser> + subject + yn + verb"

Inflected verbs not being parsed

aeth -> *aeth - (he/she/it) went

However, "aeth" is listed in cy.dix.xml (line 27491) as past 3p sing in the mynd_vblex paradigm, which is what "mynd" (to go) gets conjugated against (line 54444).

Ah - a bug in the segmentation.

*myndaeth fo -> he went

he went -> *myndaeth fe

The infinitive is getting added to the irregular forms, instead of being replaced by them.

Yep, this is a problem in the paradigm for 'mynd', I'll need to rewrite it, fortunately it is only used once... New paradigm output here - Francis Tyers

Fine, but the imperative forms also need "mynd" excised. - Donnek

Done. - Francis Tyers

Insert det.indef in prepositional NP

daeth Taid â lamp -> Grandfather came with lamp (preferably "with a lamp")

dychwelodd y rheolwr gyda gŵr tew -> the manager returned with fat man (preferably "with a fat man")

For Welsh pattern "prep + noun"
output English pattern "prep + det.indef + noun"

this should probably be working now, - Francis Tyers

I am tempted to retire this in favour of a broader rule:

For Welsh pattern "non-specific noun.sg"
output English "a + non-specific noun.sg"

"Non-specific" here means a noun that is not qualified by det.def, pr.poss, etc.

daeth car ar hyd y ffordd -> *car came along the road - a car ...

mae'r athro yn licio chwarae gêm o golff -> *the teacher is liking play game he golf - the teacher likes to play a game of golf

1.3.16 would deal with "play". For "gêm o golff" we would need to prevent "*a game of a golf" (which the existing rule would in fact have produced for "o golff"). Perhaps:

For Welsh pattern "non-specific noun + o + non-specific noun"
output English pattern "a + noun + of + noun"

This would need to fire before the revised rule above, or we need some other way of sorting out the possible doubling of "a" (a a game of golf) - LOL - let it happen and then have a rule:

For English pattern "det.indef + det.indef"
output "det.indef"

gwelodd y bachgen gath yn yr ardd -> the boy saw cat in the garden (preferably "a cat")

Preferential choice between verbforms

bydd y lamp yn rhoi golau -> *are the lamp giving light - the lamp will be giving light (and presumably we could massage this into "the lamp will give light" later, since that would be the more natural English equivalent)

A couple of things here. The most important is that tagger chooses the less frequent imperative out of the imperative/future choice for the verb. Presumably this then means that the subject shift can't take place. But even with the imperative choice, the imperative 2p sing info gets lost between interchunk and postchunk, and replaced with a generic? present which gets output as "are". Odd.

(I'm assuming that "bydd" would get output as "will be", since that would be the correct English tense.)

I fixed this (crudely) by commenting out the imperative for "be" 2pSg (You are!) When I train the tagger next I'll see if i can take care of it there. - Francis Tyers

Another example:

roedd y bechgyn yn gallu croesi dan y ffordd -> *the boys were #be<vbmod><ger># able to #vblex><vblex><pres> under the road - the boys were able to cross under the road

Here, proc decides to ignore "croesi" (cy-en.dix line 6203) as an infinitive in favour of conjugating it as present 2p sing. The infinitive option doesn't even show! Can we add some such rule as:

When you have homographous Welsh verb options <inf> and conjugated_verb
choose <inf> unless verb is followed by pr

This isn't very good, because you could have the conjugated from without a pronoun, but it might deal with this to some extent.

The example above also has some funkiness going on with "gallu" - "were be able" needs to be transformed into "were able". However, I don't know enough about how Apertium treats modal verbs to make a suggestion.

This is now giving:

the boys were being able to cross under the road

Which is an improvement. On the other hand, "^be<vbser><past><p3><pl>$ ^be able to<vbmod><ger>$" is probably redundant :) -- Not sure how to deal with this. - Francis Tyers

Comparative adjectives with "less/more"

tyfodd y twnnel yn llai llachar -> *the tunnel grew small bright - the tunnel grew less bright

tyfodd y twnnel yn fwy tywyll -> *the tunnel grew big dark - the tunnel grew more dark

For Welsh pattern "fwy/llai + adj"
output English "more/less + adj"

For English pattern "more/less + adj"
output Welsh "fwy/llai + adj"

I'll see if i can copy in a rule from Spanish--English for this :) - Francis Tyers

Synthetic comparative adjectives

Many of these seem to have faulty dictionary entries:

tyfodd y twnnel yn fwy -> the tunnel grew big (should be "bigger")

tyfodd y twnnel yn llai -> the tunnel grew small (should be "smaller")

tyfodd y twnnel yn hirach -> the tunnel grew long (should be "longer")

tyfodd y twnnel yn uwch -> the tunnel grew high (should be "higher")

Dictionary error in the bidix, now fixed. - Francis Tyers

Cool! - Donnek

Note, also a rule needs to be written for:

the expensive house → y tŷ drud

the more expensive house → y tŷ drutach

the most expensive house → y tŷ drutaf

Verb + preposition

Re "coolness factor" below (woop woop!), we need to cater for verbs such as "ymchwilio" which are followed by a preposition that is different from English, or where there is no preposition in English.

For example:

ymchwilio i - research into, investigate

siarad am - talk about

dweud wrth - say to, tell

gofyn am - ask for

Is there any way to get the verb+prep phrase parsed as a phrase, rather than separately? Perhaps an entry in one of the dictionaries? This would only need to be done for those phrases where the preposition differs in English and Welsh.

Not, for instance for:

neidio dros - jump over

cerdded i - walk to

delio gyda - deal with

where there is a regular correlation between the meanings of the Welsh and English prepositions.

Yes, these are multiword constructions, like for example "He became accustomed to the taste." → "cynefinodd Fe i y blas." (try it in the testing interface). Is there a way of getting a list of these? (actually there are many I currently need to fix in the bidix/English dict, but if you have a list I can look at them. At the moment we only seem to have multiword verbs on the English side. - Francis Tyers

I will try to compile a list of the most common, and send it to you tomorrow. - Donnek

Subordinate ("reported speech") clauses with "bod" + noun

Also referring to the cool sentence, we have two sentences as follows:

(1) roedd y Comisiwn yn ymchwilio i'r honiadau - the Commission was investigating the allegations

(2) mae yr AS wedi methu datgan £103,000 o roddion - the MP has failed to declare £103,000 of gifts

Subordinate clauses, like the relative clauses, will be difficult. But a first stab at this might be as follows:

For Welsh pattern "[b/f]od + [det.def] + noun + [qualifiers] + wedi + verb"
output English "that + [det.def] + noun + [qualifiers] + has/have (number agreeing with noun) + verb_past_participle"

clywodd y dyn bod y trên wedi cyrraedd yn hwyr -> *the man heard be the train after arrive #late

This would be:

VBSER(INF) + DEFINITE_NP + wedi + VERB

THAT + DEFINITE_NP + HAS + VERBPP

Where DEFINITE_NP is any noun phrase preceded by the definite article? - Francis Tyers

Actually, thinking about this again, it doesn't have to be definite - it just so happened that in those sentences it was. You could have something like:

clywodd ysbïwr bod y trên .... -> a spy heard that the train ....

So the NP could be "[det.def, rhyw (some), pr.poss] + [adj - eg hen] + noun + [qualifiers - adjectives, demonstratives, etc]", or it could just be "pr.subj" (clywodd fo bod y trên ...). The same applies to the "am" construction below. Another point is the the VBSER can be soft-mutated - "fod" instead of "bod". - Donnek

This rule is broadly working for now. At least it is inserting the 'that', a form of 'have' and changing the verb to a pp. It is not however robust, and seems to me a bit hacky. Could you give some more examples so I can fine tune it? - Francis Tyers

Hacky? Surely not .... I did say that relative and subordinate clauses will be difficult, so we may have to refactor as we go along. An alternative to the above (which would also cover the adjective example below) would be:

For Welsh pattern "[b/f]od + NP + complement"

output English "that + NP + is + complement"

This would give:

clywodd y dyn bod y trên wedi cyrraedd yn hwyr -> *the man heard that the train is after arrive #late

You would then have further rules to transform "is + after + verb" to "has + verbpp", and "is + for + verb" to "will + verb". (Irish and Gaidhlig have a similar construction, by the way, using "ar, air" instead of "wedi", so whatever rule bundle you use here would be transferable to that branch of Celtic too.)

There is also another similar construction using "ar" in place of "wedi" and "am" - this one means "about to":

clywodd y dyn bod y trên ar gyrraedd yn hwyr -> *the man heard be the train on arrive late - the man heard that the train was about to arrive late

So an additional rule "is + on + verb -> was + about to + arrive".

Oh, there's another one too, with "newydd", meaning "just now":

clywodd y dyn bod y trên newydd gyrraedd yn hwyr -> *the man heard be the new train arrive late - the man heard that the train had just arrived late

This one has been caught by the adjective rule, but "newydd" belongs to the VP, not the NP in this case, so we'd need some prioritisation.

Other examples:

roedd y bachgen yn dweud bod y tŷ wedi mynd ar werth -> the boy was saying that the house has gone on value

(fine, except that "ar werth" means "on sale" - see 1.3.19 below.

dywedodd hi bod y trên yn hwyr -> *she said be the train late - she said that the train is late.

You could deal with this one by adding a similar rule:

VBSER(INF) + NP + ADJ

THAT + NP + VBSER + ADJ

dwi'n meddwl bod y glaw wedi stopio -> *dwithinking that the rain has stopped - I think that ....

(We need to get the present tense of "bod" sorted out too)

dywedodd yr eneth bod y siop am agor ar amser -> the girl said that the shop will open on #time

(I'm noticing the lack of adverbs, eg "tomorrow", "today", "afterwards", etc. I suppose the remaining bits of Eurfa need importing at some point.)

Donnek

The above rule would give "the man heard that the train has arrived late" - not perfect, since in English we would use pluperfect rather than perfect here, but a lot better.

We can extend this to another construction:

For Welsh pattern "[b/f]od + [det.def] + noun + [qualifiers] + am + verb"
output English "that + [det.def] + noun + [qualifiers] + will + verb"

clywodd y dyn bod y trên am gyrraedd yn hwyr -> *the man heard be the train for arrive #late

The above rule would give "the man heard that the train will arrive late" - not perfect, since in English we would use conditional rather than future here.

This now seems to be working. - Francis Tyers

These could be improved if it were possible to refer back to the verb of the main clause. Thus where it is past, the subordinate would use pluperfect or conditional; where it is non-past, the subordinate would use perfect or future.

We can probably set this as a variable, but what would be the triggers to set/unset the variable? - Francis Tyers

End of the clause? Full stop or comma, perhaps? - Donnek

There are other varieties of subordinate clause that I give other suggestions about.

Incidentally, in the above the det.def should be taken to include other prenominal qualifiers like possessives.

Verbal nouns / Infinitives

roedd y dyn yn gwerthu pethau rhad -> the man was selling cheap things

roedd fo yn palu -> he was digging

Both of these are fine.

Making the verbal noun/infinitive the subject doesn't work quite so well:

roedd gwerthu pethau rhad yn hawdd -> *was sell cheap things easy - selling cheap things was easy

roedd palu yn waith caled -> *was dig in a hard work - digging was hard work

The latter would be benefit from the extension of the "yn as stative" rule to nouns, as suggested in 1.3.4 above. But we also need to define the VN as a subject, so that it can be shifted. This is not easy, because the rule may cause problems with other constructions later. But we can take a stab at it.

First, we can use the infinitival form in English - "to sell cheap things was easy" and "to dig was hard work" are equivalent to the above sentences.

For Welsh pattern "verb<vblex><inf>"
output English "to + verb"

For English pattern "to + verb"
output Welsh "verb<vblex><inf>"

This allows the same rule to be used in sentences like:

ceisiodd y dyn agor y bocs -> *the man sought open the box

which should produce "the man tried to open the box". (Can we delete the "seek" entry for "ceisio" until we have refined choices between different entries? The "try" entry is more frequent.)

"seek" entry commented out and replaced with "try". Francis Tyers

Second, we can assume that a verbal noun phrase will occur after an inflected verb (mostly forms of "bod"). So we might try expanding the above to say:

For Welsh pattern "verb_inflected + verb<vblex><inf> + [noun phrase]"
output English "to + verb + [noun phrase] + verb_inflected"

for the first two sentences ("roedd gwerthu pethau rhad" and "roedd palu"), and:

For Welsh pattern "verb_inflected + subject + verb<vblex><inf> + noun phrase"
output English "subject + verb_inflected + to + verb + noun phrase"

for the third ("ceisiodd y dyn agor y bocs").

This is not perfect, and I am not sure how it would cut across the existing rule for subject shift.

There are also interesting issues with nesting of infinitival subject phrases:

roedd gwerthu pethau rhad yn hawdd yn neis -> *was sell cheap things easy nice - to sell cheap things easily was nice

roedd gwerthu pethau rhad yn hawdd yn beth neis -> *was sell cheap things easy in a nice thing - to sell cheap things easily was a nice thing

where I'm not sure how you specify the boundaries of the noun phrase. Any views, or is that too complex for the present iteration.

At the moment to define noun phrases we just define fixed length patterns of tags which are matched in left-to-right, longest-match way. So for example for Welsh to English:

NOUN → SN_(NOUN)

PRNSUBJ → SN_(PRNSUBJ)

DET → SN_(DET)

DET NOUN → SN_(DET NOUN)

NOUN1 NOUN2 → SN_(NOUN2-NOUN1)

NOUN ADJ → SN_(ADJ NOUN)

yn ADJ → SN_(ADJ)

DET NOUN ADJ → SN_(DET ADJ NOUN)

NOUN ADJ1 ADJ2 → SN_(ADJ2 ADJ1 NOUN)

The first is the pattern we detect in Welsh, and the second is the "chunk" that we output in English. Any suggestions on defining more of these (the most frequently occurring), or changing them would be appreciated. - Francis Tyers

Note also in the above that we have the adverb problem from 1.3.4.

Infinitive after "yn lle"

For Welsh pattern "yn lle + verb<vblex><inf>"
output English "instead of + verb + ing"

For English pattern "instead of + verb + ing"
output Welsh "yn lle + verb<vblex><inf>"

Would you say "yn lle" is a multi-word preposition? - Francis Tyers

Yes, it is a compound preposition. "yn ei le" - instead of him (lit. in his place), "yn eu lle" - instead of them. But I don't want those included here, because there are places where you might want to translate them "in his place". - Donnek

yn lle mynd dros y ffordd -> *instead of go *dros the road - instead of going over the road

Incidentally, why is "dros" coming up as unknown here? I remember sweating over putting it in the dictionary (cy.dix line 46972, cy-en.dix line 49) :-)

It is on there, but under the paradigm /tros__pr, which means that it will never get detected... is 'dros' a mutation of 'tros' or a separate preposition, the same oddness goes for trwy and drwy. - Francis Tyers

Yes, they occur in both mutated and unmutated forms. I would think the mutated forms are more common. Hmm. I didn't realise the paradigms overwrote the cited form like that. In that case, we either need to do some [t,d] substitution, or (perhaps simpler) replicate the entire "tros" paradigm for "dros", replacing the t with d. Same for "trwy, drwy". - Donnek

This seems to be done. - Francis Tyers

"i gyd"

This mean "all", and occurs after the noun:

roedd y cwningod i gyd yn ddiogel -> *the rabbits were I joint safe - all the rabbits were safe

For Welsh pattern "det.def + noun + [qualifiers] + i gyd"
output English "all + det.def + [qualifiers] + noun"

Is 'i gyd' considered an adjective or pronoun? (or something else?) :)- Francis Tyers

An adjective, I suppose. Certainly a qualifier of some sort. - Donnek

Making progress. We now get:

roedd y cwningod i gyd yn ddiogel -> *the all rabbits were safe

Just need to massage that slightly. - Donnek

Non-compositional multiword phrases

This section is for phrases that have to be scoped as a whole, rather than broken down to their constituent parts.

ar werth - on sale

hyd yn oed - even (adv)

wrth gwrs - of course (adv)

Superlative adjective + "oll"

y rhai lleiaf oll -> *the some smallest *oll - the smallest ones of all

yn gyntaf oll -> *first *oll - first of all

For Welsh pattern "adj.super + oll"
output English "adj.super + of all"

We need to add "oll" (all) to the dictionary, but this would still be a necessary rule.

"rhai"

y rhai bach -> *the some small - the small ones

rhai mawr -> *some big - big ones

"rhai" (some) can be considered the plural of "un" (one).

For Welsh pattern "rhai + adj"
output English "adj + ones"

This also applies to phrases like "y rhai lleiaf oll" above. We need to convert "oll" first on the basis that is follows an adj, and then we need to convert "rhai" on the basis that it precedes an adj.

Dictionary errors (refs to cy-en.dix and cy.dix)

"hefyd" (152) is correctly listed as "also", but is wrongly coming up as "then".

Should be fixed - Francis Tyers

"da" (5318), is correctly listed as "good", but is coming up as unknown.

Where is it coming up as unknown? - Francis Tyers

In :"mae'r bachgen yn licio'r eneth sy'n dda". But that is now coming up OK as well. - Donnek

    <pardef n="anghydwel/d__vblex">
    <e lm="anghydweld"><i>anghydwel</i><par n="anghydwel/d__vblex"/></e>
    <e lm="cyfweld"><par n="initial-c"/><i>yfwel</i><par n="anghydwel/d__vblex"/></e>
    <e lm="gweld"><par n="initial-g"/><i>wel</i><par n="anghydwel/d__vblex"/></e>
    <e lm="rhagweld"><par n="initial-rh"/><i>agwel</i><par n="anghydwel/d__vblex"/></e>
    <e lm="ymweld"><i>ymwel</i><par n="anghydwel/d__vblex"/></e>

This paradigm appears to be broken in that some of the <r> sides are of different lengths (they should all be 'd' if /d and 'eld' if /eld) - Francis Tyers

I'm missing something, sorry. To me they are all segmented /d. - Donnek

"sydd" / "sy"

This is a relative present form of "bod" - "who/which is/are". The elided form "sy" is more common in speech. "sydd" is not listed in the dictionary, but "sy" is.

mae'r dyn yn adeiladu gwesty sy'n darparu llawer o ystafelloedd -> *the man is building hotel is provide many of rooms

mae'r blaid yn gwneud rhywbeth sy'n cyfrannu at ennill yr etholiad -> *the party is doing something is contribute towards win the election - ... which contributes towards winning the election

mae'r dafad yn pori yn y maes sy'n cynnig bwyd da -> *the sheep is grazing in the field is offer good food - ... which offers good food

(Note: there are some frustrating shortcomings in the output. If we use a variant of the last sentence:

mae'r defaid yn pori yn y cae sy'n cynnig bwyd da -> *the sheep #be<vbser><pres><p3><pl> grazing in the closes is offer good food

it appears that the conversion can't handle the plural of "sheep", and tagger insists on choosing an inflected verb ("closes", from "cau") instead of the noun (cae - field) - 1.3.5 really needs to be implemented.)

For Welsh pattern "{sydd yn, sy'n} + verb_infin"
output English "that + verb.pres.3p.sing"

This should also broadly be fixed. Can you check the output below:

mae'r dyn yn adeiladu gwesty sy'n darparu llawer o ystafelloedd → the man is building hotel that provides a lot of rooms

mae'r blaid yn gwneud rhywbeth sy'n cyfrannu at ennill yr etholiad → the party is doing something that contributes towards win the election

mae'r dafad yn pori yn y maes sy'n cynnig bwyd da → the sheep is grazing in the field that good food offers

mae'r defaid yn pori yn y cae sy'n cynnig bwyd da → the sheep are grazing in the closes that good food offers.

- Francis Tyers

Terrific. The only thing is that the last two sentences have subject shift, even though "bwyd da" is an object. Would it be possible to ban subject shift after "sy[dd]"? Also:

For Welsh pattern "at + vb.infin"

output English "towards + verb +-ing"

Donnek

Done. There are a few regressions because of the new tagger, but I'm looking into them. - Francis Tyers

"llawer"

"llawer o" (a lot of, many) seems to be OK. But another rule would be useful to deal with the third coolness sentence:

For Welsh pattern "llawer + adj.comp"
output English "much + adj.comp"

dyn llawer hŷn -> *older many man - a much older man (see 1.3.10 for the "a")

Done. - Francis Tyers

bod (inf) + subject pronoun + cael (inf)

Should this be mangled into:

be(inf)  + subject pronoun + get(inf)
that     + subject pronoun + had

e.g.

honiadau ei bod hi'n cael perthynas â

his allegations be she getting relation with → his allegations that she had relation with

... also on this subject, we currently don't have a verb for "have" in the bidix, the grammar i have suggests that "cael" might be it in a modal sense. - Francis Tyers

Subordinate ("reported speech") clauses with "bod" + pronoun

The above (1.3.25) may be worth doing, but it may be better to deal with the more general construction.

In effect, this is the same construction as 1.3.15, but with the noun replaced by a pronoun. However, while in English the pronoun is a subject pronoun, in Welsh it is a possessive pronoun. This means that the "that" word ("bod") gets sandwiched by a the two parts of the possessive pronoun (either of which may not appear, depending on style), and is also mutated accordingly.

We're currently calling "ei" and friends possessive determiners, should we change this to possessive pronoun, or does it not make much of a difference? - Francis Tyers

Not much difference I think. Possessive determiner has the benefit that they can be considered to specify the noun in the same way as det.def. - Donnek

Thus, with a noun:

clywodd y dyn bod y trên yn cyrraedd yn hwyr (the man heard that the train was arriving late)

becomes, with a pronoun:

clywodd y dyn ei fod o'n cyrraedd yn hwyr (the man heard that it was arriving late)

For Welsh pattern "[pr.poss] + VBSER.inf_mutated + [pr.subj] + yn + verb"
output English "that + pr.subj + is + verb + -ing"

Hmm, this one is problematic as we throw away the "yn" in stage one transfer in the rule that turns "yn + vblex.inf" → "vblex.ger",

^det<SD><det><pos><sp>{^his<det><pos><2>$}$ ^verbinf<SV><vbser><inf>{^be<vbser><3>$}$ 
^prnsubj<SN><p3><m><sg>{^prpers<prn><subj><2><3><4>$}$ ^verbinf<SV><vblex><ger>{^arrive<vblex><3>$}$

Would it cause any problems if we made this rule:

For Welsh pattern "[pr.poss] + VBSER.inf_mutated + [pr.subj] + verb.ger"
output English "that + pr.subj + is + verb + -ing"

This would give: "the man heard that he is arriving late" (the "he" is an open issue)

- Francis Tyers

Done. - Francis Tyers

I was actually typing in the same suggestion, but you got there first! I don't think you can do much about the "he" without some sort of semantic check, which is not realistic at this stage. the only thing you could do would be to use "he/it", but that looks clumsy. - Donnek

For Welsh pattern "[pr.poss] + VBSER.inf_mutated + [pr.subj] + wedi + verb"
output English "that + pr.subj + have/s + verb.pp"

Done. - Francis Tyers

For Welsh pattern "[pr.poss] + VBSER.inf_mutated + [pr.subj] + am + SM_verb"
output English "that + pr.subj + will + verb"

Done. - Francis Tyers

For Welsh pattern "[pr.poss] + VBSER.inf_mutated + [pr.subj] + ar + SM_verb"
output English "that + pr.subj + is about to + verb"

Done. - Francis Tyers

For Welsh pattern "[pr.poss] + VBSER.inf_mutated + [pr.subj] + newydd + SM_verb"
output English "that + pr.subj + have/s just + verb.pp"

In the above Welsh patterns, at least one of pr.poss and pr.subj must be present.

mae hi'n dweud eu bod nhw wedi mynd -> *she is saying their that they have gone - fine apart from the redundant possessive

Now gives: she is saying that they have gone - Francis Tyers

Excellent. - Donnek

mae'n amlwg ei fod o'n dweud y gwir -> *is #obvious<adj><sint> his be hesaying the true - it is obvious that he is telling the truth

Now gives: is obvious that he is saying the true (perhaps "dweud y gwir" might be a good multiword verb → "tell the truth"?) - Francis Tyers

That would be a good shortcut. "gwir" is both adj (true) and noun.m (truth), but the second is not in Eurfa! - Donnek

cy-en    mae'n amlwg ei fod o'n dweud y gwir 
         is obvious that he is telling the truth 

dywedodd y bachgen ei bod hi newydd siarad â nhw -> *the boy said his be she new talk with they - the boy said that she had just talked to them

Subject pronoun + verb (marked construction?)

"Fe dagodd ei wraig ar eu gwely yn eu cartref yn Abercynon ym mis Ebrill y llynedd ar ôl iddi ddweud ei bod yn ei adael am ddyn arall."

Gives:

"He his wife choked on their bed in their home in Abercynon in the April last year after to her say his be in his leave for other man."

The "normal" (VSO) order ("Dagodd fe ei wraig") would give:

he Choked his wife

Should we re-order prnsubj + verbcj → verbcj + prnsubj in the initial stage in order to normalise the word order?

Interesting - "fe dagodd ei wraig" is actually ambiguous in Welsh. It could mean "his wife choked", "he choked his wife", or at a pinch "it was he who choked his wife" (which would have suprasegmental differences). The news item is carrying over the subject of the previous sentence (the man) into this one, so the second choice is the correct one. But in isolation we wouldn't know.

I would hold on your suggestion, because the sentence actually omits the pr.3p.sing which would disambiguate - the "fe" at the beginning is not the (southern) pr.3p.sing - it is a (mostly southern) preverbal affirmative particle (equivalent to the (mostly northern) "mi"), in the same class as preverbal interrogative particle "a" and preverbal negative particle "ni". In fact, we need a rule to delete "fe/mi" before a conjugated verb (not perfect, but better than default), and in this case the sentence would have come out as the first choice ("his wife choked").

This is wrong in this context, but I can't see what Apertium could do about this without some complex inter-sentence parsing (if it's any consolation, a human reading this sentence in isolation might also make the same mistake until he came to the latter part).

Incidentally, if the pr.poss were omitted from "fe dagodd ei wraig" it would not be ambiguous - "fe dagodd gwraig - a woman choked", but "fe dagodd wraig - (he) choked a woman".

The "i + infin" needs a separate section.

The last part of the sentence "... ei bod yn ei adael am ddyn arall - ... that she is leaving him for another man" is in fact a special case of 1.3.26, with an object pronoun on the verb. We can see this if we take out the pr.obj:

ei bod hi'n gadael am ddyn arall -> that she is leaving for other man

Correct apart from "other", and that may be fixed if the revised 1.3.10 can be addressed. But note:

ei bod yn gadael am ddyn arall -> *his be leaving for other man

where the omission of the pr.subj means that the 1.3.26 rule is not being applied - we need to allow for this. In informal Welsh, the usual thing is to omit the pr.poss; in formal Welsh the usual thing is to omit the pr.subj. That may not be easy to handle.

I'm not going to deal with pr.obj in this construction until I have a few more basic constructions flagged - perhaps at the end of the week. - Donnek

Aha, thanks. Regarding the pr.obj construction, no problem. - Francis Tyers

Regression tests

Main article: Welsh to English/Regression tests

Coolness factor

Disclaimer: We're not deliberately aiming the translator at crime texts, it just seems to work best with these — a subject for investigation perhaps?

Roedd y Comisiwn yn ymchwilio i'r honiadau bod yr AS wedi methu datgan £103,000 o roddion.

the Commission Was investigating the allegations that the MP has failed declare £103,000 of gifts.

"He was the Commission crookedly ymchwiliad I ' group claims be he drives ACE has failed declare he gifts." (InterTran)

Dywedodd yr heddlu fod y troseddau honedig wedi digwydd rhwng 2003 a 2007 yn Sir Benfro a Sir Gaerfyrddin.

the police Said that the alleged crimes have happened between 2003 and 2007 in Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire.

"He said he drives police force be the transgressions alleged has happened between 2003 I go 2007 crookedly Shire ble I go Shire Gaerfyrddin." (InterTran)

Mae'r heddlu hefyd yn ymchwilio i honiadau ei bod hi'n cael perthynas â dyn llawer hŷn.

the police Are also investigating his allegations be she getting relation with a much older man.

"He ' is being group police force also crookedly ymchwiliad I claims you go be she ' heartburn have relation he goes tight much hn & #375." (InterTran)