Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian and Macedonian

Source

https://apertium.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/apertium/trunk/apertium-sh-mk

Notes

Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian morphological lexicon

The reflex of yat:

• Added two additional modes to the monodix (ek/ijek) so that lemmas containing yat can be analysed both as ekavian and ijekavian
• Updated the makefile and the xslt machinery so that this works

Verbs(Marked for aspect, transitivity and reflexivity)

• Most of them are from a list extracted from the verbs in the mk monodix
• Verb paradigm names are fashioned to contain information about the verb ("aspect_transitivity_paradig/m__vblex"), makes input more convenient

Adjectives:

• marked for definiteness
• entered as quadruples (positive, comparative, superlative, absolute superlative)

Other:

• Added the paradigms from the grammar of Croatian (the one by Barić, Lončarić, Malić, Pavešić, Peti, Zečević, Znika) to the sh monodix

Macedonian dictionary

• Added determiner forms for some pronouns (e.g demonstratives, possessives, etc.) -- things that can modify nouns
• Added some words from closed categories (adverbs, ...)

Bilingual dictionary

• Updated the pronoun entries, the symbols in the monodix have been adjusted to correspond more closely to the analysis in the macedonian monodix

Transfer rules

Transfer rules

Three stage transfer is used.

Some problems:

Genitive constructions, problem in distinguishing partitive from possesive:

• Čaša vode = Чаша вода [partitive]
• Pilotkinje Vojske Srbije == Пилотките на Српската војска [possesive]
• TODO: After the lexicon in the analyser becomes sufficiently large grep out all "(Noun) (Noun + Genitive)" occurences in i.e. the wikipedia corpus, and find pairs which:
  • More frequently appear as partitive
  • More frequently appear as possesive
  • Can appear either way

and afterwards ignore the latter case, and make two categories of noun pairs.

Tricky sequences (instrumental adjectives):

• "...upravljanje velikom, jakom 'pticom' " == "...управување со голема, силна 'птица' ".

Only one preposition needed for the whole chain, which can be of any length.

• What we do here is just make long chunks in the t1x, e.g. in this case: ADJ ADJ CM ADJ NOM

  These sequences will probably be fairly infrequent though... - Francis Tyers 09:05, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Change of gender in translation: ...vožnja<f> zrakoplovom bila je odlučujuća<f>... == ...возење<nt> со авион беше решавачко<f>. Potentialy too far to be matched.

Obligatory clitic with definite object

• I saw the man == Го видов човекот

The clitics must preceed the finite verb, in this order:

• subjunctive-negative-mood-aux-ethical dative-dative object-accusative object-verb
• ...да не ќе сум си му го дал... == that I won't have given it to him...

Possesive genitive to на construcions:

• Anina čaša == чашата на Ана (Ana's glass)
• Anina ruka == раката на Ана (Ana's hand)
• (possible TODO in the mk analyser: add an analysis for possesive adjectives, currently doesn't exist)

Preposition 's' when standing with genitive does not translate as 'со':

• ...sam poletjela s avionske piste...==...полетав од авионската писта... and not ...со авионската писта..., which would have an instrumental meaning

Disambiguation rules

For all cases modifiers (adjectives, numbers, pronouns) transfer number, case and gender, so instances like these were used to disambiguate

• ...sa njenim toplim nježnim rukama - A sequence in instrumental
• ...sa svojih toplih nježnih ruku - A sequence in genitive

Nominative or accusative:

• Select Accusative if there's a preceeding Accusative preposition
• Select Accusative if there's a preceeding transitive verb (direct object rule)

Genitive or accusative:

• Disambiguate based on prepositions (the intersection is only "u")
• Select accusative if there's a preceeding transitive verb (direct object rule)

Dative or locative:

• Select dative if there's no preceeding preposition or modifier in dative
• Select dative if there's a preceeding dative preposition
• Select locative if there's a preceeding locative preposition

Instrumental (unambiguous in singular):

• Select instrumental if there's a preceeding instrumental preposition
• In plural identical to Dative/Locative
  • (easily disambiguated from Locative, since the latter is entirely prepositional)
  • Possible problems in the plural with instrumental/non-instrumental, though not yet encountered
    • "Ljudima sam pomeo pod" - 'To the people' or 'using the people'
    • "Ploviti morima" - To sail 'to the seas' or 'across seas' (or 'using the seas')

Numbers:

• Numbers 2-4 govern noun phrases differently (remnants of dual), two variants:
  • "s trima lijepim ženama" (with three women). The number and the rest of the phrase take the dual forms (Nom,Acc,Voc==Gen.Sg, Gen=>Gen.Pl (triju lijepih žena), Dat,Loc,Ins=>Ins.Pl (trima lijepim ženama) ). This variant is more literary.
  • "s tri lijepe žene" (the number is in a frozen form, and the rest of the phrase gets genitive, the actual meaning is determined from context or prepositions). This variant is closer to actual speech.

See also

• Pending tests
• Regression tests
• Final report

TODOs

• Set up corpus/generation-test

External links

• Wikipedia: Differences in standard Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian
• Hrvatski jezični portal — Croatian language portal, word definitions with inflection (find the definition and click on izvedeni oblici )
• Macedonian<->Serbian online dictionary
• Word definitions for Macedonian
• Блаже Конески - Историја на македонскиот јазик (Blaže Koneski - History of the Macedonian Language; in Macedonian, cyrilic)

Further reading

• Ivan Todorović "Disambiguation of Serbian sentences with Unitex".

References

• SEELRC Bosnian / Croatian / Serbian Reference Grammar
• SEELRC Macedonian Grammar