Ideas for Google Summer of Code/Discontiguous multiwords

Objectives

• Create a typology of different types of discontiguous multiword expressions in Germanic, Celtic, Romance, Turkic, Uralic languages
  • Separable/phrasal verbs
  • ..
• Create a new FST-based module for recognising and reordering discontiguous multiword expressions
• Include support for discontiguous multiwords in an existing language pair.
  • English-Catalan, English-Spanish, Icelandic-English, Dutch-Afrikaans, ...

First steps

<spectei> so, for that i would recommend you install the is-en language pair
<spectei> and the multiword-reorder module
<spectei> https://apertium.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/apertium/branches/gsoc2010/skh/multiword-reorder
<spectei> and start "playing"
<spectei> some of the features work
<spectei> but it is poorly documented
<spectei> and isn't yet included in any language pair
<spectei> the link for is-en is: https://apertium.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/apertium/trunk/apertium-is-en
<spectei> http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Minimal_installation_from_SVN

Old hack

Here is a cheap hack for how to deal with analysing discontiguous multiword units when translating from Germanic languages.

For example,

vísa manninum frá landinu -> vísa# frá manninum landinu
                             'deport   the man  from the country'

vísa ekki frá             -> vísa# frá ekki
                             'deport   not'

The idea is to distinguish verbs which can be parts of discontiguous
multiwords, and particles/adverbs which can also be. For example:

1) vísa/=vísa manninum frá/~frá landinu .

2) vísa/=vísa manninum undan/~undan landinu .

3) vísa/=vísa manninum upp/~upp landinu .

We will use constraint grammar rules to select the appropriate particle
if a verb exists.

LIST VISAPART = ~frá ~upp ; 

REMOVE ("=vísa") (NOT 1* VISAPART);
SELECT ("=vísa") (1* VISAPART);

etc.

We will then use a mode of pretransfer (I suggest -m) to join the two
parts thus:

=vísa manninum ~frá landinu -> vísa# frá manninum landinu

'If LU starts with =, read buffering until ~ or ."

The '.<sent>' will be considered a hard delimiter, so that if no
particle is found in the sentence, the buffered part is output without
the initial '='.

Initial ~ and = found without both parts will be stripped.

Benefits: Can be implemented now in a backwards compatible way.
Drawbacks: Might be too simple ? Creates more dependencies on CG ?

See also

• Módulo de procesamiento de expresiones separables
• Separable verbs
• Discontiguous multiwords