3 ms·

Also the grammars of English and German are pretty similar. How well would it scan in other languages? Perhaps “well enough” is sufficient.

shadowgovt 6y ago
The key idea is that if the semantic description is abstracted enough, a grammar engine can convert the ideas encoded in it into the right structure for the language. Not all languages have "X is Y" constructs, but all known human languages have some structure to declare that object X has property Y. Capture the idea "Object X has property Y" in your semantic language, and a grammar engine can wire that down to your target language. The largest risk is that the resulting text will be dry as hell, not that it's an impossible task.
- popinman322 6y ago
  Though being dry doesn't diminish the value of the text, though. Very exciting. I'd also be worried about ambiguity; humans can (sometimes) detect when they may be parsed the wrong way in context. I wonder if there will be a way to flag results that don't properly convey the data. How would that be integrated into the generator? (There's probably an answer in the literature.) Lots of fun questions to explore.
- knolax 6y ago
  The main problem is that language X has an implicit definition of Foo, which is similar but not identical to language Y's definition of Bar. This might work when the languages share common ancestry like German and English, where Foo and Bar are both descendent from Baz and have similar meanings, but will not work when you try to translate to language Z, whose speakers have a different word Foobar which has a meaning that encompasses Baz and Qux but excluding Xyzzy and with a completely different connotation.
dmortin 6y ago
Try Finnish or Hungarian, for example.
- Ekaros 6y ago
  Finnish would likely work, though it would require very extensive rules on declinations. Some compound word and list rules are also fun... Finnish is rather liberal in word-order, but that's a simple fix. What is hard in that the conjucts do not have unique identifiers in the example. That is an essential thing to have. As there is plenty of synonyms and meaning might change. Same applies to center.

shadowgovt 6y ago

The key idea is that if the semantic description is abstracted enough, a grammar engine can convert the ideas encoded in it into the right structure for the language. Not all languages have "X is Y" constructs, but all known human languages have some structure to declare that object X has property Y. Capture the idea "Object X has property Y" in your semantic language, and a grammar engine can wire that down to your target language. The largest risk is that the resulting text will be dry as hell, not that it's an impossible task.

popinman322 6y ago
Though being dry doesn't diminish the value of the text, though. Very exciting. I'd also be worried about ambiguity; humans can (sometimes) detect when they may be parsed the wrong way in context. I wonder if there will be a way to flag results that don't properly convey the data. How would that be integrated into the generator? (There's probably an answer in the literature.) Lots of fun questions to explore.
knolax 6y ago
The main problem is that language X has an implicit definition of Foo, which is similar but not identical to language Y's definition of Bar. This might work when the languages share common ancestry like German and English, where Foo and Bar are both descendent from Baz and have similar meanings, but will not work when you try to translate to language Z, whose speakers have a different word Foobar which has a meaning that encompasses Baz and Qux but excluding Xyzzy and with a completely different connotation.

dmortin 6y ago

Try Finnish or Hungarian, for example.

Ekaros 6y ago
Finnish would likely work, though it would require very extensive rules on declinations. Some compound word and list rules are also fun... Finnish is rather liberal in word-order, but that's a simple fix. What is hard in that the conjucts do not have unique identifiers in the example. That is an essential thing to have. As there is plenty of synonyms and meaning might change. Same applies to center.