Talk:Automatically trimming a monodix

Implementing automatic trimming in lttoolbox

The current method: compile the analyser in the normal way, then lt-trim loads it and loops through all its states, trying to do the same steps in parallel with the compiled bidix:

trim(current_a, current_b):

  for symbol, next_a in analyser.transitions[current_a]:

    found = false

    for s, next_b in bidix.transitions[current_b]:
      if s==symbol:
         trim(next_a, next_b)
         found = true
    if seen tags: 
      found = true

    if !found && !current_b.isFinal():
      delete symbol from analyser.transitions[current_a]

    // else: all transitions from this point on will just be carried over unchanged by bidix

trim(analyser.initial, bidix.initial)

product automaton for intersection

Trimming while reading the XML file might have lower memory usage, but seems like more work, since pardefs are read before we get to an "initial" state.

A slightly different approach is to create the product automaton for intersection, marking as final only state-pairs where both parts of the state-pair are final in the original automata. Minimisation should remove unreachable state-pairs. However, this quickly blows up in memory usage since it creates all possible state pairs first (cartesian product), not just the useful ones.

https://github.com/unhammer/lttoolbox/branches has some experiments, see e.g. branches product-intersection and df-intersection

TODO

• Would it make things faster if we first clear out the right-sides of the bidix and minimize that?
• remove all those ifdef DEBUG's and wcerr's
• more tests?
• if no objections: git svn dcommit

Compounds vs trimming in HFST

The sme.lexc can't be trimmed using the simple HFST trick, due to compounds.

Say you have cake n sg, cake n pl, beer n pl and beer n sg in monodix, while bidix has beer n and wine n. The HFST method without compounding is to intersect (cake|beer) n (sg|pl) with (beer|wine) n .* to get beer n (sg|pl).

But HFST represents compounding as a transition from the end of the singular noun to the beginning of the (noun) transducer, so a compounding HFST actually looks like

((cake|beer) n sg)*(cake|beer) n (sg|pl)

The intersection of this with

(beer|wine) n .*

is

(beer n sg)*(cake|beer) n (sg|pl) | beer n pl

when it should have been

(beer n sg)*(beer n (sg|pl)

Lttoolbox doesn't represent compounding by extra circular transitions, but instead by a special restart symbol interpreted while analysing. lt-trim is able to understand compounds by simply skipping the compund tags