Neo-Aramaic/Disambiguation

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This is our page for the construction of our Neo-Aramaic disambiguator. It can be found here.

Initial Evaluation of Ambiguity

Initially, our transducer did not pick up on any ambiguity. This is probably because we haven't implemented that much of our language's lexicon yet. We decided to add forms to our transducer with the potential for ambiguous analyses, particularly Neo-Aramaic's independent and attributive pronouns:

ܐܗܵܐ<prn><sg><m><near><nom><ind> ↔ ܐܗܵܐ aha 'this (independent pronoun)'
ܐܗܵܐ<prn><sg><m><near><nom><atr> ↔ ܐܗܵܐ aha 'this (attributive pronoun)'

We had difficulty finding evidence for these forms in our Sureth dictionary we've come to rely on so much, but found an older dictionary by AJ Mclean that did include them.

The difference between the use of the two forms is illustrated below.

ܐܵܬܹܐ ܐܗܵܐ 'this kills'
ܐܵܬܹܐ ܢܘܼܝܢ ܐܗܵܐ 'this fish kills'

We implemented this ambiguity across the near, medium, and far forms of these pronouns and for their masculine singular, feminine singular, and plural forms.

Since we could not find these forms in our existing corpus, in order to test our new analyses and disambiguator, we wrote our own sentences and places them in a new text file in our larger corpus. The text we used, plus translations, is show below:

ܦܵܬܚܹܢ ܠܹܗ ܐܵܗܵܐ ܒܸܬܵܐ 'I open this house'
ܐܵܗܵܐ ܡܵܕܡܹܚ ܠܹܗ ܟܵܢܬܘܼܢܬܵܐ 'This causes the cat to sleep'
ܐܵܒܒܵܐ ܣܵܒܘܼܢܵܐ ܡܘܼܠܸܕ ܠܹܗ ܒܵܒܵܐ 'This grandfather begat the father'
ܟܵܢܬܘܼܢܬܵܐ ܩܵܛܠ ܠܹܗ ܐܵܝܝܵܐ 'The cat kills this'
ܐܵܝܝܸܐ ܦܬܹܚܠܵܐ ܠܹܗ ܒܝܼܬܵܐ 'That opened the egg'
ܡܵܠܟܵܐ ܦܵܬܚ ܠܹܗ ܐܵܝܝܵܐ 'The king opens this'

After running tests on this small corpus, our transducer was generating 25 forms with 31 analyses. Our constraints were very basic but got the job done; we wanted to remove independent pronouns when they were followed by a noun phrase (a noun or an adjective), and use attributive pronouns when they were followed by a noun phrase (noun or adjective). These are very basic but make sense with the grammar and syntax of Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, as seen in Geoffrey Khan's grammar.

To implement this rule in our rlx file, our lists were

LIST Independent = (prn sg m near ind) (prn pl near ind) (prn sg m med ind) (prn sg f med ind) (prn sg m far ind) (prn sg f far ind) (prn pl far ind) ;
LIST Attributive = (prn sg m near atr) (prn pl near atr) (prn sg m med atr) (prn sg f med atr) (prn sg m far atr) (prn sg f far atr) (prn pl far atr) ;
LIST Noun = (n sg nom) (n pl nom) ;
LIST Adjective = adj ; 

Our constraint rules were

REMOVE Independent IF (1 Noun OR Adjective) ;
REMOVE Attributive IF (NOT 1 Noun OR Adjective) ;

Final evaluation of ambiguity

Across our small corpus, we now have no ambiguity.