Báo cáo khoa học: Syntactical Variants

Traditional grammar is normally eclectic and vaguely formulated, and it often tends to overgeneralize or fails to state the range of validity for its rules. Grammars for mechanical translation must be all-inclusive and rigorously explicit. While the input language grammar must register all the grammatical constructions possible, the existence of basically synonymous morphological and syntactical variants permits considerable inventorial reduction in the output grammar.
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Báo cáo khoa học: "Syntactical Variants" [Mechanical Translation, vol.4, nos.1 and 2, November 1957; pp. 28-34]Syntactical Variants†Bjarne Ulvestad, Research Laboratory of Electronics,Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts* Traditional grammar is normally eclectic and vaguely formulated, and it often tends to overgeneralize or fails to state the range of validity for its rules. Grammars for mechanical translation must be all-inclusive and rigorously explicit. While the in- put language grammar must register all the grammatical constructions possible, the existence of basically synonymous morphological and syntactical variants per- mits considerable inventorial reduction in the output grammar. These considera- tions are discussed with reference to English and German examples: verb phrases w ith remember/ (sich ) erinnern a s the head; as if’ / als ob clauses.IT IS POSSIBLE to imagine a series of poor the syntactical constructions of a given pair ofbut successively better machine-made trans- languages, and especially of the one on the in-lations, ranging from, say, very poor to put side of the translation machine, will ulti- fair or not so very poor, which might be mately have been tagged or assigned theirfound to be substantially adequate for their var- specific memberships in a large number ofi ous purposes. Thus even a lowest-grade or groups and subgroups of linguistic entities, andvery poor translation would conceivably have the more exhaustive this intricate taxonomy,a demonstrable adequacy, provided its purpose t he more adequate, i.e., the less liable to pro-were merely to acquaint its prospective read- duce ungrammatical and nonsensical sentenceers with the subject matter of the original (in- sequences, will be the corresponding transla-put language ) text.1 Leading up from this kind tion mechanism.of primitive, low-standard mechanical trans- The tantalizing question as to whether an ab-lation to one that would be regarded by the pun- solutely foolproof apparatus for the mechanicald its as correct, to the finest shades of idio- transfer of information from one language tomatic nuances, there is an almost discourag- another can be constructed, if only in theory,ingly long, devious path, or rather a long se- need not bother us too much at this stage, forries of shorter excursions each of which is even if the answer to the question should in themore complex and laborious than its predeces- end turn out to be negative, less-than-perfectsor. If we, as we should, consider it impera- mechanical translation will nevertheless betive never to compromise with perfection where useful for scholars, whose main concern isperfection is attainable, all the words and all naturally to obtain an adequate communication of scientific facts and ideas rather than stylis- tically impeccable texts, desirable though the latter may be.† T his work was supported by the U.S. Judging from reports on the highly significantArmy ( Signal Corps ), the U.S. Air Force(Office of Scientific Research, Air Research work which is at present carried on at variousand Development Command), and the U.S.Navy universities, we have every reason to believe( Office of Naval Research); and in part by the that most of the general technical problems ofNational Science Foundation. mechanical translation are approaching their solution. As an example of this kind of prom-* On leave from University of California, ising study, one may mention N. ChomskysBerkeley, California; now at University of and V. Yngves research into workable recog-Bergen, Bergen, Norway. nition devices for use in sentence-for-sentence translation, which is vastly preferable to word-1. Cf. J. W. Perry, Translation of Russian for-word transfer. While the bulk of linguistictechnical literature by machine, MT, Vol. 2, work in the field of mechanical translation hasNo. 1, pp. 15-24 (1955). thus far admittedly been of a rather general S yntactical Variants 29 ...