Double prepositions reveal new 'verb+preposition' verbs

'Vocal minorities are listened to by media organisations.'*

To discover new verbs that are composed of verb+preposition, make up a sentence using the verb+preposition in passive voice, and attaching a prepositional phrase (ie, starting with 'to','for','by','from' etc.). Then remove the preposition from the suspected verb and see if the two sentences give different meanings. To further confirm the discovery, a third sentence can be constructed where the prepositional phrase is removed, leaving the original verb+preposition in passive voice.

Example: 'I parked him in.'

Sentence 1: 'His car was parked in by me.'
Sentence 2: 'His car was parked by me.'
Sentence 3: 'His car was parked in the driveway.'

Sentence 1: 'His car is parked in at the shopping centre carpark.'
Sentence 2: 'His car is parked at the shopping centre carpark.'
Sentence 3: 'His car is parked in the shopping centre carpark.'

The appearance of double prepositions indicates that 'to park in (someone or their vehicle)' is verb that is distinct from the verb 'to park' + preposition 'in'.

*Stimulus: "Joe's blog has much more influence than you think", by Bobbie Johnson in London, 19 April, 2006, Sydney Morning Herald (http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/rise-of-the-blogosphere/2006/04/18/1145344085840.html).

2006-04-19 03:15:00pm (GMT +10) kyy

'Contrariwise' - New Word Parsing

'contrariwise'

Possible parsing procedure
1. Verbalise (silently or voiced)
2. Verbal word matching - sounds like 'contrary' + 'wise'
3. Contextual confirmation - rhymes with 'otherwise', 'other' and 'contrary' have overlapping meanings, and the word occurs at the beginning of a clause, like 'otherwise'.

Software imitation
1. Insert syllable breaks (imitating verbalisation): con~tra~ry~wise.
2. Try to see if any of the combinations fit existing words:
con~tra~ry~wise
contra~ry~wise
con~tra~rywise
con~trarywise ('con' means 'with' in some languages, but 'trarywise is unfamiliar)
contra~rywise
contrary~wise
3. Contextual confirmation (as per above).

Possible meaning is suggested from the most likely parsing:

'Contrary' at the beginning suggests 'contrary to popular belief', 'contrary to what has been said', 'on the contrary'

'~wise' suggests 'in all situations contrary to what has been said', since 'otherwise' means 'in all other situations'

These two meanings seem to reinforce each other, adding further support for the parsing that we first chose.

Source article:

Today's buzzword: plausible deniability
In deception problems, plausible deniability is the ability to engineer a reasonable doubt about secret behavior. An example is a backdoor that results from intentionally bad coding practice. This is plausibly deniable as an innocent mistake; contrariwise, you will have no excuse if someone finds working shellcode in some hex constants.

2006 Underhanded C Contest (http://www.brainhz.com/underhanded/).

2006-04-06 01:23:00pm (GMT +10) kyy

'Keshi' as a Sentence Breaker

'Keshi' ('but') breaks a sentence into two parts that should be parsed separately.

Translation software should insert '</sentence><sentence>' immediately before 'keshi'.

<sentence> ... </sentence><sentence>keshi ... </sentence>

2006-04-06 09:16:00am (GMT +10) kyy

Disambiguating info inside the sentence

Following is an example of Step 1 of the Disambiguation Procedure:

'Nèigè rén tā shì shéi?' ('那个 人, 他 是 谁?', Lit: 'That person, he is who?)

Neige (singular): That
Neige (plural): Those
ren (singular): person
ren (plural): people/persons
ta (singular): he
shi: BE
shei: who

The first two words, 'neige' and 'ren', may be singular or plural. However, 'ta' is singular, and so provides the necessary information within the sentence to disambiguate the two options for 'neige' and 'ren'.

2006-04-03 05:58:00pm (GMT +10) kyy

Observations on Plurality

The general rule is that the plurality of the verb and subject must agree.

1. Plurality and modifiers

Some modifiers (adjectives) use the plural form while others use the singular form, regardless of whether the noun being modified is in singular or plural form.

For example, number words use singular form when they are functioning as adjectives (e.g. 'one cat', 'three dogs'), whereas demonstrative pronouns agree with the plurality of the noun (e.g. 'that car', 'those cars')

2. Plurality and meaning vs form

Plurality is a concept that deals with the meaning (semantic) of the word, rather than the form. (e.g. 'the fish are swimming to the sea', 'the fish is dead')

Note: Sometimes the subject of the sentence may not be the last occurring noun before the verb.

For example, in the sentence, 'Three loaves of bread are being eaten by the pigs,' the subject is 'loaves' not 'bread'.

2006-04-03 05:05:00pm (GMT +10) kyy

Disambiguation Procedure

Procedure for disambiguating translation options

1. Search for info inside the sentence.
2. Search for info outside the sentence (contextual search).
3. Ask user to input the extra information. (If user is given options to choose from, also give an 'other' option, e.g. 'other', 'neither' or 'both/all')
4. Ask user to select appropriate option.
5. Select default option.

If steps 3, 4 or 5 are used, then gather data about which option was selected for later analysis, to improve steps 1 and 2.

2006-04-03 04:19:00pm (GMT +10) kyy

Split Sentences

Some sentences are split on a page in such a way that a computer might have trouble guessing where it ends.

For example:
'A sentence may begin normally, then morph into a list of things, namely
1. Item 1
2. Item 2
3. Item 3
before coming to an end.'

To parse this sentence properly, you need to indicate the start and end of a sentence unequivocally. This can be done by using opening and closing tags which have no visual effect, like so:

<sentence>In this example, it is clear where the sentence starts and ends, even though it may be split into two with a list, namely
1. Item 1
2. Item 2
3. Item 3
before coming to an end.</sentence>

2006-04-01 05:42:00pm (GMT +10 -1) kyy