Eckhard Bick - VISL

The remaining 2 words of the 4-word pre-comma group are checked first, before
progressing, then, the search window is reset to after the break (comma).
WORD1 WORD2 WORD3 WORD4, WORD5 ......
step 1 | |
step 2 | |
step 3 |XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX| | |
step 4 |_________________ _ _ _ _ _ _
|
The overlapping search is clearly necessary to find all possible combinations:
without punctuation breaks, n words may form n*(m-1) combinations of up to m
elements. With a depth of 4 this amounts to 3000 possible polylexicals for a 1000
word text.
It is crucial to begin with the longest string and then work backwards, one
might otherwise miss 3- or 4-word polylexicals, that "contain" smaller ones. E.g., in
Portuguese, 'dentro=em' (inside) is a complex preposition, 'dentro=em=breve' (before
long) a complex adverb. In searching from left to right one would miss out on the
(longer) adverb reading, because 'dentro=em' is found first, and the search string
reset to start from scratch at position 3.
2.2.4.2 Word or morpheme: enclitic pronouns
Generally, in inflecting languages like Portuguese, future tense endings are regarded
as bound morphemes, whereas pronouns are classified as (free morpheme) words.
However, making things less easy for the preprocessor, Portuguese allows both to
appear as hyphenated "linked" morphemes, too. Consider the following examples:
(1a) O comprei amanhã. (I'll buy it tomorrow.)
(1b) Comprá-lo-ei amanhã.
(2a) Não o pode fazer. (He can't do it.)
(2b) Não pode fazê-lo.
(3a) O tinham visto. (They had seen him.)
(3b) Tinham-no visto.
(4) Chove. (It rains.)
In (1b) the direct object pronoun 'o'/’lo’ is placed mesoclitically, before the future
tense inflexion ending, which thus becomes enclitic. The preprocessor has to
recognise this structure and transform it into a canonical form, which the word-based
tagger can understand:
(1c) *Comprei- o amanhã.
As can be seen in (2) and (3) both the stem and the enclitic pronoun undergo
phonetically motivated changes, the infinitive loosing its 'r' and receiving a stress
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