Notes on computational linguistics.pdf - UCLA Department of ...

Stabler - Lx 185/209 2003
3 more exercises with sequences – easy, medium, challenging!
(4) Define a predicate countOccurrences(E,L,Count) that will take a list L, an element E, and return the Count
of the number of times E occurs in L, in decimal notation.
Test your predicate by making sure you get the right response to these tests:
?- countOccurrences(s,[m,i,s,s,i,s,s,i,p,p,i],N).
N = 4 ;
No
?- countOccurrences(x,[m,i,s,s,i,s,s,i,p,p,i],N).
N = 0 ;
No
(5) Define a predicate reduplicated(L) that will be provable just in case list L can be divided in half – i.e. into
two lists of the same length – where the first and second halves are the same.
Test your predicate by making sure you get the right response to these tests:
?- reduplicated([w,u,l,o]).
No
?- reduplicated([w,u,l,o,w,u,l,o]).
Yes
This might remind you of “reduplication” in human languages. For example, in Bambara, an African
language spoken by about 3 million people in Mali and nearby countries, we find an especially simple
kind of “reduplication” structure, which we see in complex words like this:
wulu ‘dog’ wulo o wulo ‘whichever dog’
malo ‘rice’ malo o malo ‘whichever rice’
*malo o wulu NEVER!
malonyinina ‘someone who looks for rice’ malonyinina o malonyinina ‘whoever looks for rice’
(6) Define a predicate palindrome(L) that will be provable just in case when you look at the characters in
the atoms of list L, L is equal to its reverse.
Test your predicate by making sure you get the right response to these tests:
?- palindrome([wuloowulo]).
No
?- palindrome([hannah]).
Yes
?- palindrome([mary]).
No
?- palindrome([a,man,a,plan,a,canal,panama]).
Yes
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