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Re: Shoebox!

From:Danny Wier <dawier@...>
Date:Thursday, July 20, 2000, 7:30
--- The Gray Wizard <dbell@...> wrote:

> Is anyone on the list using Shoebox from SIL for lexicon management. > I > started playing with it a few days ago and what a joy! My approach > was to > import some amman iar sentences and have Shoebox attempt interlinear > translation. In the process, I would enter the required roots and > affixes > (both derivational and inflectional) into the lexicon, thereby > "training" > the parser. I was amazed at how quickly the parser became "smart" > enough to > "automagically"
Automagically! Another neologism! That's fantabulous!
> create interlinear parses with dwindling intervention > by > yours truly. It only took a few texts for the parser to learn most > of the > derivational and inflectional system requiring me only to add new > roots as > they were encountered. This despite the fact that my language, amman > iar, > has some significant morphophonemic challenges. It was a breeze to > encode > the lexicon with the necessary morphophonemic rules (although it > would have > been nice to define these globally rather than redundantly for each > effected > affix). I'm not sure the results would be as satisfying for a > heavily > fusional language, but for highly agglutinating languages such as > amman iar, > it really is quite good.
It works with inflected languages? So you can parse a classic IE or Semitic language? I tried it once -- it was way too complex for me, or it didn't work; I forgot. Lemme see how it works...
> Here's a brief example of the interlinear parse generated. Note how > well it > handles the morphophonemic rules. I entered the \t line, Shoebox > generated > the \m, \g and \p lines. I later added the \f line. > > i dhraug vasamald ergabedhel eleth > The vicious wolf pounced. > > \t i dhraug-0 vasamald > \m i draug -0 ve- as= amald > \g the wolf -[S] desc- complement= gentle > \p DET N -ABS ADJ- PREF= N > \f the wolf vicious
Lenition of /d/ to /D/, as in Welsh... okay, you won me over. (Anything with Insular Celtic-style mutation gets my attention.) I'll try and see if I can get it to work with Calistan (an IE conlang)... DaW. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get Yahoo! Mail – Free email you can access from anywhere! http://mail.yahoo.com/