A generic framework for Arabic to English machine ... - Acsu Buffalo
A generic framework for Arabic to English machine ... - Acsu Buffalo
A generic framework for Arabic to English machine ... - Acsu Buffalo
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(4.1a)<br />
4.5. CHALLENGES OF ARABIC TO ENGLISH MT<br />
S(NP(pron(he)), VP( v(saw),NP(det(the), N(girl),<br />
PP(prep(with),NP(det(the),n(telescope))))))<br />
(4.1b)<br />
S(NP(pron(he)), VP(v(saw),NP(det(the),n(girl)),<br />
PP(prep(with),NP(det(the),n(telescope)))))<br />
The tree structures required may of course be much more complex, not only in the sense<br />
of having more levels, or more branches at any given level, but also in that the labelling<br />
of the nodes (i.e. the ends of the branches) may be more in<strong>for</strong>mative.<br />
4.4.4 Structural differences<br />
Many relatively trivial syntactic differences between languages are well known, e.g. in<br />
<strong>Arabic</strong> most adjectives follow nouns but in <strong>English</strong> adjectives normally precede the nouns<br />
they qualify. Also, <strong>Arabic</strong> sentences have more than one structural type. The sentence<br />
which contains a verb, will have order of the <strong>for</strong>m verb(V), subject(S) and object(O) or<br />
verb(V), object(O) and subject(S). The only combinations that do not occur in <strong>Arabic</strong> are<br />
OSV and SOV (Attia 2004).<br />
4.5 Challenges of <strong>Arabic</strong> <strong>to</strong> <strong>English</strong> MT<br />
<strong>Arabic</strong> words can often be ambiguous due <strong>to</strong> the three-letter root system. These conso-<br />
nant roots interlock with patterns of vowels or consonants <strong>to</strong> words or word stems. This<br />
root system allows the language <strong>to</strong> evolve <strong>to</strong> cover a wide range of meanings. In some<br />
derivations one or more of the root letters is dropped, resulting in possible ambiguity.<br />
Examples of derived words from a three-letter-root are shown in Table 4.2.<br />
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