Constructions

Constructions have been varyingly defined. Sometimes they look really like multiword expressions, other times they look like syntactic transfer, most of them have probably have some kind of fixed lexical element.

Constructions may be compositional in the source language like "my name is Eric", but not "compositional in translation" ("my name is Eric" → "Em dic Eric", "Eg heter Eric"). They may also be non-compositional in the source language.

_ X's name _ be _ Y _ .	My name is really Gary.
_ X _ be _ Y year old _ .	I will be ten years old tomorrow.
_ X _ be _ {hungry, thirsty} _ .	I am really thirsty.
_ X _ be _ on X's way _ .	She's on her way.
a few X short of a Y	Jethro is a few methods short of a class.
the X-er _ the Y-er _	The longer the wait the more exciting the outcome.

Some constructions are pretty frequent "phrase-book" type stuff, like "Hello, my name is Barry." (currently translated by Apertium as "Hola, el meu nom és Barry.") that are not easy to translate word-for-word, but also quite annoying to have in transfer rules.

Questions

• How should constructions interact with word-for-word/chunking translation?