RE: lingo-l Grammar parser in Lingo...?
Howdy wrote: Howdy all. Wondering if anyone's heard of a grammar parser behavior, object or script in Lingo. What are you trying to do? Maybe you could incorporate a plug-in like: http://www.systransoft.com/Products/Standard.html Or maybe Bablefish: http://babelfish.altavista.com/ HTH, Tom Thomas O. Coleman Freelance Web/New Media Designer/Developer [EMAIL PROTECTED] [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to http://www.penworks.com/lingo-l.cgi To post messages to the list, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Problems, email [EMAIL PROTECTED]). Lingo-L is for learning and helping with programming Lingo. Thanks!]
RE: lingo-l Grammar parser in Lingo...?
Syntax was the course in my masters (linguistics) that put me to sleep on a daily basis (of course, we had our first baby also in the middle of that course, which may have contributed to the sleep-deprivation syndrome, but that's beside the point). The parser logic will not be hard for basic sentences, or even medium difficulty ones, but the real brain-busters are in the longer sentences that are grammatically ambiguous (even to the writers of the text book). Those will be pretty hard to come up with reliable logic for. Which is, I guess, the main challenge for any translation program, trying to deal with the subtleties of human language (us humans often don't get it right). I'd suggest getting your hands on a 2nd year linguistics text book that focuses on syntax (first year will be too basic), and start by formulating the structure for the easy sentences. Most of the formulas will already be laid out for you, you will just need to get inside the logic to create the parsing routine. After that, you can start wrapping your mind around the ambiguous stuff. I think you wrote before that your background was in English literature, so you will probably already have thought through those issues. As you said in your email, the logic itself shouldnt be too hard to create, as long as you have time to work through the sheer volume of possibilities. Having just completed a director project that is a vocabulary clinic for Arabic, I can also say that the most enjoyable part of this type of project (for me anyways) is programming the logic. The database of vocab that you create to help interpret your input will likely be hellishly tedious to create and check! :) (Interesting side note... Has anyone ever surveyed director-users, or lingo/director list subscribers, as to how many of us come from a non-technical background? I suspect it's high, but would be curious to see. Anyways...) If you move ahead with this project, and are open to keeping interested people in the loop, I'd be curious to see where it goes! Andrew -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Howdy-Tzi Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2003 6:58 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: lingo-l Grammar parser in Lingo...? Howdy all. Wondering if anyone's heard of a grammar parser behavior, object or script in Lingo. [snip] The idea is that this would be some kind of code that could be used to generate a pre-translation table of words, which would then be converted into another language. (That's not all that difficult to conceive either; it's simply an output generator based on the input... it's the input side of things that I'm most interested in...) Warren Ockrassa | President, nightwares LLC [EMAIL PROTECTED] nightwares LLC | Consulting Programming http://www.nightwares.com/ Developer | Structor, a presentation development/programming tool Info and demo | http://www.nightwares.com/structor/ Author | Director 8.5 Shockwave Studio: A Beginner's Guide Chapter samples | http://www.nightwares.com/director_beginners_g uide/ --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.496 / Virus Database: 295 - Release Date: 7/3/2003 [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to http://www.penworks.com/lingo-l.cgi To post messages to the list, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Problems, email [EMAIL PROTECTED]). Lingo-L is for learning and helping with programming Lingo. Thanks!]
RE: lingo-l Grammar parser in Lingo...?
I made a simple grammar parser plug-in as a contract once. It was rudimentay though. It was for a children's game. The game was based around a schoolroom locker scenario. There were six lockers with different items in them. The items were simple. Pencil, book, sweater, etc. The user would recieve a question such as, Who has a red book? The player would type, Tom has a orange book, or something like that. The user would then get feedback like a is the incorrect participle(? or whatever it was) for orange and underline the errors. Since the answers were always of very similiar for it was easy to just make a look up table for the nouns, etc. This was all contained in property lists. Not to advanced but maybe some food for thought. Kraig -Original Message- From: Howdy-Tzi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2003 9:58 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: lingo-l Grammar parser in Lingo...? Howdy all. Wondering if anyone's heard of a grammar parser behavior, object or script in Lingo. [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to http://www.penworks.com/lingo-l.cgi To post messages to the list, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Problems, email [EMAIL PROTECTED]). Lingo-L is for learning and helping with programming Lingo. Thanks!]
RE: lingo-l Grammar parser in Lingo...?
Howdy all. Wondering if anyone's heard of a grammar parser behavior, object or script in Lingo. snip The idea is that this would be some kind of code that could be used to generate a pre-translation table of words, which would then be converted into another language. I expect you know that machine translation is a really, really involved and complex issue. It's so complex that there is, afaik, no suitable translation program available. Considering how much stuff has to be translated into a bunch of languages, that says something. Even something as simple as telling the difference between a noun and a verb isn't so easy. Consider lead and lead, or record and record. Then you have to deal with the ambiguities of languages, and idiomatic usage. Consider the sentence: He drove a half block and turned into a small restaurant. Or the fact that you really don't want to translate I am cold word for word into German. Maybe it can be done, but I'm pretty certain that Lingo would be the wrong language for it. Way, way too slow for such a complex task. Cordially, Kerry Thompson [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to http://www.penworks.com/lingo-l.cgi To post messages to the list, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Problems, email [EMAIL PROTECTED]). Lingo-L is for learning and helping with programming Lingo. Thanks!]
Re: lingo-l Grammar parser in Lingo...?
Howdy all. Wondering if anyone's heard of a grammar parser behavior, object or script in Lingo. Hi Warren, I've written a few in lingo - context free, top-down, bottom-up, augmented grammers, link-node style (the one I am using in a project about to be released uses a combination of the last two). There is quite a bit of info on the net - and example code (mostly written in Lisp, which isn't too alien to Lingo). Commonly, they all use recursion to work your way through a sentence, making assumptions about what a word is based on what was previous, then checking that assumption by examing words further to the right (which are analysed the same way). When an assumption is proved wrong, you back up the parse tree and try another approach. The context free parsers are relatively straightforward (I might be able to dig up some old scripts -- I can't show you the ones I am using, unfortunately). The link-style parsers (which treat words a bit like pieces in a puzzle that can only join up with other pieces with matching connections) tend to involve much bigger search trees. Figuring out ways to 'prune' the search becomes more important. Anyway, the basic approaches - (event the context-free parsers) can be pretty good. You get to a point pretty quickly where the amount of code you write and processor cycles you use start to increase exponentially for tiny improvements in the parsing. Luke [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to http://www.penworks.com/lingo-l.cgi To post messages to the list, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Problems, email [EMAIL PROTECTED]). Lingo-L is for learning and helping with programming Lingo. Thanks!]
lingo-l Grammar parser in Lingo...?
Howdy all. Wondering if anyone's heard of a grammar parser behavior, object or script in Lingo. What I mean is something that can analyze the syntax of a given plain-english (!) sentence and break it down into the appropriate parts of speech: He went to the grocery store might be broken down as such: He: Subject went: Verb to the grocery store: Prepositional phrase to: Preposition the: Definite article grocery: Adjective store: Object of preposition ...and other such joys. Simple subject/verb/object or subject/verb/adjective constructions shouldn't be a big deal (Warren is insane) but for compound and complex sentences I'm not quite sure how to really begin the approach. Though in some ways the compound/complex parsing wouldn't really be all that different from the basic parsing; it would, however, have to know when it was looking at such a construction before it could break it into its smaller components. Obviously there'd have to be a dictionary as well that could recognize individual words and slot them into their likely categories based on context. That's not a big problem either (just tedious to produce). The idea is that this would be some kind of code that could be used to generate a pre-translation table of words, which would then be converted into another language. (That's not all that difficult to conceive either; it's simply an output generator based on the input... it's the input side of things that I'm most interested in...) Warren Ockrassa | President, nightwares LLC [EMAIL PROTECTED] nightwares LLC | Consulting Programming http://www.nightwares.com/ Developer | Structor, a presentation development/programming tool Info and demo | http://www.nightwares.com/structor/ Author | Director 8.5 Shockwave Studio: A Beginner's Guide Chapter samples | http://www.nightwares.com/director_beginners_guide/ [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to http://www.penworks.com/lingo-l.cgi To post messages to the list, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Problems, email [EMAIL PROTECTED]). Lingo-L is for learning and helping with programming Lingo. Thanks!]
