Talk:Welsh to English/Archive 1

Section numbers from this version.

(1.3.2) "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.

(1.3.4) 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

(1.3.6) 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

(1.3.7) 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).

(1.3.8) "-ing" as "yn + verb"

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

(1.3.9) 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