4 ms·

This compiles to "He likes 2 green cats" in English. The representation makes no assumption of SVO order, the grammatical category of numbers, and what cases a

by 4ad 12y ago

This compiles to "He likes 2 green cats" in English. The representation makes no assumption of SVO order, the grammatical category of numbers, and what cases and tenses are available. (OPRESENT ((OSUBJECT (OPRONOUN (3, 0))) ((OVERB, "like") OMUL (2, (OCAST (OATTR (OCOLOR "brown")), (ONOUN (OANIMAL, "cat"))))))) I'm sure someone smart will tell me what assumption I made that's invalid in some language I do not know, but this already is better, and simpler, and more correct than a lot of text-mapping based internalizations I've seen. And I will be able to correct my S-expr to get rid of more assumptions, and I will just make it longer perhaps, but I won't need to write all the convoluted code prevalent in the article. Also, with AST-based representation you can add whatever context you need. For example, were I to have used "pig" instead of "cat", this would have already worked fine, since we have (OANIMAL, "pig") and not (OPERSON, "pig"). This is trivial, but you can add whatever amount of context required.

mercurial 12y ago
Well, obviously, you're missing the mood. Besides, I see two issues with that: - While it may be more machine-readable, it's absolutely not human readable - Something like (OPRONOUN (3, 0)) assumes that pronouns work like in English. Want to represent text in a language for which it is not the case with this system? No dice. In short, I'd rather have an improved gettext (without hacks to detect if you're gettext'ing printf'd text...) than your proposed AST solution.
schoen 12y ago
Now I'm just wondering about the lexicon since the primitive tokens are things like "like". One potential problem is when two languages don't have words with enough semantic overlap to be comfortable using one as a translation for another. Another potential problem is when An analogy to my other comment on AST translation: in English you "like doing something" but in German you "do something gladly" (and again in English you "like a person" but in German you can "have a person dear", akin to English "hold dear"). If we expect that the AST can produce a translation using the single verb "like", we may be in for trouble if the target language doesn't do that (although maybe code can be written that uses the AST and that's aware of this complexity as part of the realization of the translation). Another example could come from the problem of describing states of being or perception, like "I'm cold", "I'm tired", "I'm hungry", "I'm thirsty", "I'm sick", etc. In English we really like using "to be" plus adjectives for such situations, but other languages have other preferred strategies. For example Latin has specialized verbs for the actions of (at least) being hungry, thirsty, or sick (like esurio, sitio, aegroto); in Romance languages people often "have" hunger or thirst (Spanish "tengo hambre", lit. 'I have hunger'; Portuguese "estou com fome", lit. 'I am with hunger'); in German it is cold "to" a person ("mir ist kalt", not "ich bin kalt" 'I am a cold person'). If you imagine having your AST start with Latin, you may have a challenging story about how you could get from "sitisne?" to "are you thirsty?" "¿tienes sed?" "está com sede?" and "hast du durst?" -- not to deny that it may be achievable with enough work.

by 4ad 12y ago

mercurial 12y ago

Well, obviously, you're missing the mood. Besides, I see two issues with that: - While it may be more machine-readable, it's absolutely not human readable - Something like (OPRONOUN (3, 0)) assumes that pronouns work like in English. Want to represent text in a language for which it is not the case with this system? No dice. In short, I'd rather have an improved gettext (without hacks to detect if you're gettext'ing printf'd text...) than your proposed AST solution.

schoen 12y ago

Now I'm just wondering about the lexicon since the primitive tokens are things like "like". One potential problem is when two languages don't have words with enough semantic overlap to be comfortable using one as a translation for another. Another potential problem is when An analogy to my other comment on AST translation: in English you "like doing something" but in German you "do something gladly" (and again in English you "like a person" but in German you can "have a person dear", akin to English "hold dear"). If we expect that the AST can produce a translation using the single verb "like", we may be in for trouble if the target language doesn't do that (although maybe code can be written that uses the AST and that's aware of this complexity as part of the realization of the translation). Another example could come from the problem of describing states of being or perception, like "I'm cold", "I'm tired", "I'm hungry", "I'm thirsty", "I'm sick", etc. In English we really like using "to be" plus adjectives for such situations, but other languages have other preferred strategies. For example Latin has specialized verbs for the actions of (at least) being hungry, thirsty, or sick (like esurio, sitio, aegroto); in Romance languages people often "have" hunger or thirst (Spanish "tengo hambre", lit. 'I have hunger'; Portuguese "estou com fome", lit. 'I am with hunger'); in German it is cold "to" a person ("mir ist kalt", not "ich bin kalt" 'I am a cold person'). If you imagine having your AST start with Latin, you may have a challenging story about how you could get from "sitisne?" to "are you thirsty?" "¿tienes sed?" "está com sede?" and "hast du durst?" -- not to deny that it may be achievable with enough work.