Talk:German to English
Getting started
What's the best approach to start adding entries to the German monodix?
- A good way would be to stat writing a script to download Wiktionary entries for German nouns and converting them into speling format, e.g.
Bett; Bett; sg.nom; n.nt Bett; Bettes; sg.gen; n.nt Bett; Betts; sg.gen; n.nt Bett; Bett; sg.dat; n.nt Bett; Bett; sg.acc; n.nt Bett; Betten; pl.nom; n.nt Bett; Betten; pl.gen; n.nt Bett; Betten; pl.dat; n.nt Bett; Betten; pl.acc; n.nt Haus; Haus; sg.nom; n.nt Haus; Hauses; sg.gen; n.nt Haus; Haus; sg.gen; n.nt Haus; Haus; sg.dat; n.nt Haus; Haus; sg.acc; n.nt Haus; Häuser; pl.nom; n.nt Haus; Häuser; pl.gen; n.nt Haus; Häusern; pl.dat; n.nt Haus; Häuser; pl.acc; n.nt
- There are around 15,000 entries in the category German nouns, so that should be a good start. - Francis Tyers 07:13, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
- Another thing you can do is make lists of closed category words that don't inflect (E.g. prepositions, conjunctions) and also of abbreviations. - Francis Tyers 07:15, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
Order of symbols
Francis, what should be the expected order of the symbols in the morphological analysis? Let's say we are analyzing "Apfel", is it <POS><gender><case><number> or <POS><gender><number><case>? I guess it should also output all the possible cases, e.g.:
Apfel<n><m><nom><sg> Apfel<n><m><acc><sg> Apfel<n><m><dat><sg>
- <PoS><gender><number><case> - for lack of a better phrase, that's the order of inherency, plus it's easier to work with. Much easier. -- Jimregan 15:39, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
- Also, listing 'viele' as the plural of 'ein' is dubious, and will more than likely cause problems. Treat them as separate words -- Jimregan 15:53, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
Here's a repository with some initial progress (sorry for the delay, I was out of town last week):
https://github.com/elaichi/apertium-de-en-dev
There are fewer nouns than expected because my script only got the ones with the de-noun template and not the infl|de|noun template.
Auxiliary verbs
Question: In "Basic German" by Schenke the only two auxiliary verbs are "sein" and "haben", while 'the six modal verbs in German' are "dürfen", "können", "müssen", "sollen", "wollen", "mögen". I guess that the correct treatment in Apertium is something like this:
bin/sein<vbser><pres><p1><sg> bist/sein<vbser><pres><p2><sg> ist/sein<vbser><pres><p3><sg> sind/sein<vbser><pres><p1><pl> sind/sein<vbser><pres><p3><pl> habe/haben<vbhaver><pres><p1><sg> hast/haben<vbhaver><pres><p2><sg> hat/haben<vbhaver><pres><p3><sg> haben/haben<vbhaver><pres><p1><pl> haben/haben<vbhaver><pres><p3><pl> haben/haben<vbhaver><inf> ...
and mark those six modal verbs with the vbmod tag. But doing this would leave the vbaux tag unused, is this correct?
- Does "werden" classify as
vbaux?
- We use
vaux, but it can be I guess. - Francis Tyers 22:03, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
Personal pronouns
Question: Regarding personal pronouns, I looked at the way it's done in Icelandic and it seems that the correct treatment would be something like this:
ich/ich<prn><p1><mf><sg><nom> mich/ich<prn><p1><mf><sg><acc> mir/ich<prn><p1><mf><sg><dat> du/du<prn><p2><mf><sg><nom> dich/du<prn><p2><mf><sg><acc> dir/du<prn><p2><mf><sg><dat> er/er<prn><p3><m><sg><nom> ihn/er<prn><p3><m><sg><acc> ihm/er<prn><p3><m><sg><dat> ...
this is, as opposed to using prpers as in:
I/prpers<prn><subj><p1><mf><sg> me/prpers<prn><obj><p1><mf><sg>
is this correct?
- Yes, that's fine. This stuff is really easy to change later anyway. - Francis Tyers 22:03, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
Adjectives
German adjectives are confusing, any tips on how to treat them would be appreciated :)
Ordinals
Question: should ordinal numbers be treated as determiners or adjectives? Some examples in other languages:
fifth<det><ord><sp> # english quinto<det><ord><m><sg> # spanish fimmti<adj><ord><m><sg><nom> # icelandic vijfde<det><ord><sp> # dutch
- It doesn't really matter either way. What do the traditional grammars say ? - Francis Tyers 22:03, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
Contractions
Question: how should prepositional articles (preposition + article) be treated? e.g.
am = an + dem aufs = auf + das beim = bei + dem im = in + dem vom = von + dem
my guess is that it should follow the treatment in other languages, e.g.
al/a<pr>+el<det><def><m><sg> # spanish del/de<pr>+el<det><def><m><sg> # spanish au/à<pr>+le<det><def><m><sg> # french
is this correct?
- Yes, this is correct. But I wouldn't bother to do this in the speling file. Use the speling file mainly for the open categories. - Francis Tyers 22:03, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
