Báo cáo khoa học: Order of Subject and Object in Scientific Russian When Other Differentia Are Lacking

The order of subject and object is an adequate criterion for distinguishing between them when other grammatical properties are ambiguous.HARPERl AND LEHISTE2 have discussed the order of subjects and predicates in Russian scientific text. Lehiste concludes that "form and function" should be used to distinguish the subject from the predicate of a Russian sentence; although her conclusion may be accepted (subject to assumptions about the value of maintaining customary English order in the output), her dictum must be converted into programmable instructions....
Nội dung trích xuất từ tài liệu:
Báo cáo khoa học: "Order of Subject and Object in Scientific Russian When Other Differentia Are Lacking" [Mechanical Translation, vol.5, no.3, December 1958; pp. 111-113] Order of Subject and Object in Scientific Russian When Other Differentia Are Lacking D. G. Hays, The Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, California The order of subject and object is an adequate criterion for distinguishing between them when other grammatical properties are ambiguous. HARPERl AND LEHISTE2 have discussed the takes an accusative object), the choice between order of subjects and predicates in Russian sci- these nouns must be made on grounds other entific text. Lehiste concludes that form and than morphology. function should be used to distinguish the subject Word order and semantic agreement imme- from the predicate of a Russian sentence; although diately come to mind. Semantic agreement her conclusion may be accepted (subject to as- would require thoughtful, expensive research. sumptions about the value of maintaining custom- The hypothesis that subjects precede their pre- ary English order in the output), her dictum must dicates whenever the latter contains a noun be converted into programmable instructions. that could be mistaken (morphologically) for the T o a certain extent, the most economical subject can be tested rapidly and inexpensivelymethod of distinguishing subject from predicate by reference to a body of data already collectedis obvious and straightforward. Verbs, short- at The RAND Corporation.form adjectives and participles, and other po-tential fillers of the predicate slot are marked Methodin the glossary and can be identified when theyoccur in text. Inasmuch as some glossary A large volume of Russian physics text hasentries are marked (in effect) possibly predi- been keypunched into IBM cards, referred to acate, some difficulties are involved in finding glossary, and analyzed by translators3; thethe predicate, but we wish to pass over these structure of each sentence has been determinedto a specific problem of detail. in accordance with a dependency theory, and T he formal characteristics by which a sub- each dependency relation punched into a card.ject can be recognized are, roughly, part of For a sample of 22, 000 occurrences (running words) of text4, a special report has been pre-speech, gender, number, person, and case.The subject and predicate of a sentence are, in pared (by machine processes), showing all de-fact, two of its members of specifiable parts of pendents of every occurrence in the sample;speech, agreeing in number and either person the listing is ordered by the grammatical typeor gender, while the subject must be of speci- of the governor.fied case, i . e . , nominative. Unfortunately, Since subject and object are regarded as de-for example, two nouns in a sentence may be pendents of the main predicate element in ourequally good candidates for the role of subject; theory, it is simple to scan the section of thisthis is true because the nominative and accusa- report that is devoted to verbs and their dependtive cases are not always formally distinct. ents, noting the textual location of every verbThus, if two neuter nouns, each nominative or with two dependents, of which either could beaccusative, respectively precede and follow athird-person, singular, non-past verb (which 3. H. P. Edmundson and D. G. Hays, Re- search Methodology for Machine Translation,1. К . Е . Harper, A Preliminary Study of MT, 5, 1958, 8-15.Russian, in W. N. Locke and A. D. Booth,Machine Translation of Language, New York, 4. H. P. Edmundson, K. E. Harper, D. G.Wiley, 1955. Hays, and A. K. Koutsoudas, Studies in Ma- chine Translation - - 9: Bibliography of Russian2. Ilse Lehiste, Order of Subject and Predi- Scientific Articles, The Rand Corporation, Re-cate in Scientific Russian, MT, 4, 1957, 66- search Memorandum RM-2069, October 16,67 1958. (Corpus 2 was used in the present study.)112 D.G. Hays Table 1 INSTANCES OF MORPHOLOGICALLY INDISTINGUISHABLE SUBJECT AND OBJECT IN A SAMPLE OF RUSSIAN PHYSICS TEXT* T hree subjects are in apposition with con-j unctions of Non-Cyrillic occurrences. Subject and Object 113 Имеет место состояние (a state thatsubject. All doubtful cases were noted as well.A 3x5 card was prepared for each such occur- occurs)rence, and the cards (about 100 in number) Имеет место правило (a rule occurs)were sorted into textual order. Examination of all 100 occurrences required Имеет место уменьшение (a decrease occurs)only about 3 hours. Doubtful cases were re-solved, situations in which a modifier of eithernoun distinguished its case were recognized and Note that the verb-object pair might be re-discarded, subject and object were differenti- garded as idiomatic ...