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4.3 Formality Feature
In Catalan and Spanish, there is a distinction between formal and informal personal
pronouns, especially for second person singular and plural. However, as the IF is
influenced by English, this distinction is not reflected in this interlingua. In example
(4), the verbal form ajudar-lo (to help you) implies a formal relationship between
the speaker and singular addressee, while in (5) ajudar-te (to help you), the implied
relationship is familiar.
(4) CAT-AGENT: ¿En què puc ajudar-lo?IF: a: offer+help (help=(who=i, to-
whom= you))
(5) CAT-AGENT: ¿En què puc ajudar-te?
IF: a: offer+help (help=(who=i, to-whom= you))
But if we inspect the IF representations for both examples, we see that they are
the same. This is due to the lack of a formality feature in this interlingua. This does
not imply any problem when translating from Catalan/Spanish into English, as the
latter does not have any formal register; but it could cause a loss of meaning when
translating from Catalan into Spanish or vice versa, for instance, or from either of
these two languages into French, for example, which also makes a second person
register distinction.
To solve this problem of representing register, we can add a new argument-
value pair to the IF with the argument [formal=] and the values (yes) or (no). When
implementing this new feature, the IF representation for examples (4) and (5) would
be (6) and (7), respectively.
(6) IF: a: offer+help (help=(who=i,( to-whom= you, formal=yes)))
(7) IF: a: offer+help (help=(who=i, (to-whom= you, formal=no)))
Through the use of these new argument-value pairs, we would be able to
communicate the feature of formality and have it available in the target language, if
applicable.
4.4 Conceptual Gaps in Catalan and Spanish
Another problem we had to overcome when developing the Catalan and Spanish
grammars had to do with the lexicons. Since IF was developed with English as point
of reference, there are IF values that refer to lexical items that do not exist in
Catalan or Spanish per se. In essence, the semantic field is not divided equivalently
between the languages. Sometimes, it is a word or an expression, such as Christmas
crackers, that does not exist either in the Catalan or Spanish culture. When facing
this problem we maintain the same English word, as there is no cultural equivalent.
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