Basque and Spanish
The idea
Mireia Ginestí is recycling Matxin data to build an Apertium-based system that would allow Spanish speakers to read Basque newspapers.
Some of the morphological choices in Matxin will be revised.
This document is to keep track of decisions and to raise questions
Deklinabidea?
For instance, "declination" will be treated as postpositions:
gizonentzat : gizon.n + a.det.pl + tzat.post
In principle, the absolutive will not be marked:
gizonak : gizon.n + a.det.pl
Determiners and postpositions will be given mnemonic lemmas, one per case.
gizonei : gizon.n + a.det.pl + i.post Mirenekin : Miren.NP + kin.post katuarentzat : katu.n + a.det.sg + tzat.post
Postpositions which can modify a noun phrase will be marked explicitly as ko
etxeetako: etxe.n + a.det.pl + ko.post.ko Mikelekin : Mikel.NP + kin.post Mikelekiko : Mikel.NP + kin.post.ko
Possessives?
A problem appears with "possessives" like 'nire', 'gure', 'zuen', 'haien', 'bere'. Should they be treated as preadjectives ('izenlagun') or as genitive constructs:
nire: ni.pron.sg + ren.post.ko haien : hura.pron.pl + ren.post.ko
Tagger categories
The way basque is analysed in our system gives some problems to the tagger. Postpositions and determiners are attached to the main word with a '+' (<j/> in xml). The tagger sees the resulting lexical forms as separate forms unless a def-mult element is defined in the tagger with 2 or more lexical forms. This is the analysis of 'liburuak'
^liburuak/liburu<n>+a<det><art><pl>/liburu<n>+a<det><art><sg>+k<post>$
Unless a multiple category is defined in the tagger file, the third LF ('k<post>') will always be output as it has not another LF to be compared with (2 vs 3 LF). The solution is to define a multiple category in the tagger for 'a<det><art><sg>+k<post>' so that it can be compared to 'a<det><art><pl>' of the first analysis:
<def-mult name="DETERG" closed="true">
<sequence>
<tags-item tags="det.art.sg"/>
<tags-item lemma="k" tags="post"/>
</sequence>
</def-mult>
Then we found another problem with the tagger. The analysis of 'neska' and other nouns ending in 'a' is:
^neska/neska<n>+a<det><art><sg>/neska<n>$
In order for the two analyses to be compared as two different LF in the tagger, we should define a def.mult:
<def-mult name="NOMDET" closed="true">
<sequence>
<tags-item tags="n"/>
<tags-item tags="det.art.sg"/>
</sequence>
</def-mult>
But this enters in conflict with the multiple category defined above, as 'a<det><art><sg>' will be joined to the noun to build a multiple unit and therefore can not build a unit with 'k<post' (DETERG category).
The solution to this conflict was to define a different category for nouns ending with 'a', and a multiple category only for these nouns attached to a singular determiner:
<def-label name="NOMA">
<tags-item lemma="*a" tags="n"/>
<tags-item lemma="*a" tags="IZE.ARR"/>
</def-label>
<def-mult name="NOMA_DET">
<sequence>
<label-item label="NOMA"/>
<tags-item tags="det.art.sg"/>
</sequence>
</def-mult>
