Eckhard Bick - VISL

variable word forms receive '_'- linking, with '%' after element words that can be
inflected. In this last group (with variable non-hyphenated elements) one can find
idiomatic expressions and even proverbs. Since these are mostly of semantic interest,
the program - for now - ignores them, checking only for non-varying expressions,
with the important exception of incorporating verb structures and plurals of complex
nouns or adjectives. Also, with respect to proverbs and clause-level idioms, it seems
to be more interesting for a parser to assign syntactic structure in an analytical way
than to provide a summary treatment in a synthetic way. 17
It is the preprocessor which has to identify and '=' - mark polylexical strings.
Technically this is done by adding up running words to a potential polylexical string,
until a maximum (at present: 4) is reached, or punctuation gets in the way, whichever
happens sooner. This is more difficult than it sounds, - a '.."WORD..' -structure, e.g.,
breaks a running string, but is allowed string-initially, whereas '..WORD,..' becomes
part of the string, but breaks it nevertheless, losing its ',' . When a string reaches
maximum, the following happens:
a) polylexical search with negative result:
A group of 4 words is checked (in a left bounded fashion) first for long, then shorter
polylexicals. If none is found, the 4-word window moves one word to the right, and
the search process is repeated.
17 Another matter is, of course, machine translation, where "synthetical treatment" is preferable and necessary for
assigning an idiomatic translation.
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