On Aug 29, 2009, at 5:25 PM, kcrisman wrote: > On Aug 29, 6:45 pm, Robert Dodier <robert.dod...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Minh Nguyen wrote: >>> Usually "an" comes before a word that starts with a vowel, i.e a, e, >>> i, o, u. So one would say "an eight o'clock meeting" or "an 8 >>> o'clock >>> meeting". More examples: an amphibian, an egg, an igloo, an octopus, >>> an umbrella. However, there are situations when this rule doesn't >>> apply. In software engineering, one uses UML diagrams as part of the >>> design process. Although this acronym starts with a capital "u", >>> it's >>> pronounced and written as "a UML diagram" not "an UML diagram", just >>> as in "a ewe" not "an ewe". >> >> In American English at least (I just don't know about other >> varieties) >> it is typical to change some vowels into diphthongs, in particular to >> change initial u into iu instead. In iu, i acts as a semivowel, >> and it's typical to use the article "a" in front of a word beginning >> with iu, e.g. a unicorn. But e.g. "urn" doesn't have the initial >> semivowel, >> so the article is "an", so "an urn". >> >> The other semivowel (there might be still others, but I can't think >> of them at the moment) is w as in "one". As with semivocalic i, >> the article for semivocalic w is "a", e.g. a one-time deal. >> > > Yes. And don't forget things like "an historical novel" versus "a > historical novel", depending on what part of the US you are from (no > idea for other parts). But at any rate, a versus an is purely > phonetic. At least in theory, there are also two pronunciations of > "the" (thee and thuh), depending on the same input. Thee angel, thuh > time. > > Well, whatever; definitely no good algorithm! Especially in the land > of abbreviations and letters that mathematics is. Should we maybe use > other articles for other alphabets, ό α or א ה or something?
The generic problem is hard (and in practice typically solved via heuristics + an exception lookup table), but for numbers, an integer - > English words algorithm is very easy to write, and there are very few words that can come up first, so this particular case isn't too difficult. >> In all varieties of English, there is a pretty broad gulf between >> orthography and pronunciation. (I don't know if the orthography was >> fixed ages ago and pronunciation continued to evolved, or if they >> were never really aligned to begin with.) In a fantasy world, you >> would see that urn has a different initial letter than unicorn, but >> for now you just have to listen to the pronunciation to figure out >> the appropriate article. > > Orthography is horrible because so much of the vocabulary is from > Anglo-Saxon or old French, but we barely pronounce anything like > Icelandic. For a great example, see http://www.etymonline.com/ > index.php?term=enough > - a lot of initial "g"s became "y"s or disappeared, and I can only > assume the final g was originally pronounced that way since it still > is in German. Even worse, most of our words come from latin/old French, but most of our common words and grammar come from the Celts and the Goths. (Interestingly, this was originally a class distinction between the nobles and the peasants, which is why we have beef (for those who ate them)/cows (for those who raised them), etc.) Language evolution can create strange (but usually algorithmic) rules, but this hybrid history is what causes so many irregularities. English historically has been more accepting of importing foreign words as well, which doesn't help things. > Also, Isn't French another language whose pronunciation > is only related to orthography by very complicated or non-algorithmic > rules? Because it's still written like it was centures ago? I feel > like I've heard that somewhere. French has rather complicated rules, in which many letters become silent much of the time, but it tends to be very regular at least. > So English isn't unique like that, though it's probably the only > language you can really have a spelling bee in :) In France the equivalent of a spelling bee is a "dictation" in which the challenger reads a paragraph or two (typically from a famous work) and you copy it down. The challenge is filling in all these silent letters, especially as many of them can only be deduced in context and by agreement with other parts of the text. (For example, as in English, the generic way to make things plural in French is to add an 's' to the end, but this 's' is usually silent, so the only way you'd know it's there is by context.) > Anyway, interesting thread. I assume that there are no algorithms for > Chomskian transformational grammars in Sage yet, but maybe someone > should volunteer. Some day I'm sure it'll happen. The transformations themselves are usually pretty simple, it's coming up with a minimal set of transformations that describe a huge set of phenomena that's the challenge. - Robert --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-support@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-support-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-support URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
