Re: Computer Number Concord

From: Jukka K. Korpela (jkorpela_at_cs.tut.fi)
Date: 01/09/05 

Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2005 22:57:05 +0000 (UTC)

Prai Jei <pvstownsend@zyx-abc.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:

> Any automatic message generator would need to have the singular and
> plural forms (and dual, if applicable) coded up separately to allow for
> "irregular" plurals or where several plural endings are available

Yes indeed - though it might use dictionary lookup, using the singular form
passed as a parameter as key, fetching information that indicates the
declination type used for that word, and generating the declined word.
But that would be more complicated and would mean that _someone_ has to do
the coding anyway, and to do quite job, encoding declination information in
a form that can be used in automatic processing. On the other hand, such
work has already been done to some extent when creating data that can be
used in the generative part of an automatic translation system. 

-- 
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/