Refine
Document Type
- Article (1)
- Conference Proceeding (1)
- Doctoral Thesis (1)
- Other (1)
Language
- English (4)
Has Fulltext
- yes (4)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (4)
Keywords
- Latin (4) (remove)
Publicationstate
- Veröffentlichungsversion (3)
- Postprint (1)
- Zweitveröffentlichung (1)
Reviewstate
Publisher
Learning new languages has a high relevance in today’s society with a globalized economy and the freedom to move abroad for work, study or other reasons. In this context new methods to teach and learn languages with the help of modern technology are becoming more relevant besides traditional language classes.
This work presents a new approach to combine a traditional language class with a modern computer-based approach for teaching. As a concrete example a web application to help teach and learn Latin was developed.
In this paper we present work in developing a computerized grammar for the Latin language. It demonstrates the principles and challenges in developing a grammar for a natural language in a modern grammar formalism. The grammar presented here provides a useful resource for natural language processing applications in different fields. It can be easily adopted for language learning and use in language technology for Cultural Heritage like translation applications or to support post-correction of document digitization.
This thesis describes work in three areas: grammar engineering, computer-assisted language learning and grammar learning. These three parts are connected by the concept of a grammar-based language learning application. Two types of grammars are of concern. The first we call resource grammars, extensive descriptions a natural languages. Part I focuses on this kind of grammars. The other are domain-specific or application-specific grammars. These grammars only describe a fragment of natural language that is determined by the domain of a certain application. Domain-specific grammars are relevant for Part II and Part III. Another important distinction is between humans learning a new natural language using computational grammars (Part II) and computers learning grammars from example sentences (Part III). Part I of this thesis focuses on grammar engineering and grammar testing. It describes the development and evaluation of a computational resource grammar for Latin. Latin is known for its rich morphology and free word order, both have to be handled in a computationally efficient way. A special focus is on methods how computational grammars can be evaluated using corpus data. Such an evaluation is presented for the Latin resource grammar. Part II, the central part, describes a computer-assisted language learning application based on domain-specific grammars. The language learning application demonstrates how computational grammars can be used to guide the user input and how language learning exercises can be modeled as grammars. This allows us to put computational grammars in the center of the design of language learning exercises used to help humans learn new languages. Part III, the final part, is dedicated to a method to learn domain- or application-specific grammars based on a wide-coverage grammar and small sets of example sentences. Here a computer is learning a grammar for a fragment of a natural language from example sentences, potentially without any additional human intervention. These learned grammars can be based e.g. on the Latin resource grammar described in Part II and used as domain-specific lesson grammars in the language learning application described Part II.
The present paper provides a new approach to the form-function relation in Latin declension. First, inflections are discussed from a functional point of view with special consideration to questions of syncretism. A case hierarchy is justified for Latin that conforms to general observations on case systems. The analysis leads to a markedness scale that provides a ranking of case-number-combinations from unmarked to most marked. Systematic syncretism always applies to contiguous sections of the case-number-scale (‘syncretism fields’). Second, inflections are analysed from a formal point of view taking into account partial identities and differences among noun endings. Theme vowels being factored out, endings are classified on the basis of their make-up, e.g., as sigmatic endings; as containing desinential (non-thematic) vowels; as containing long vowels; and so on. The analysis leads to a view of endings as involving more basic elements or ‘markers’. Endings of the various declensions instantiate a small number of types, and these can be put into a ranked order (a formal scale) that applies transparadigmatically. Third, the relationship between the independently substantiated functional and formal hierarchies is examined. In any declension, the form-function-relationship is established by aligning the relevant formal and functional scales (or ‘sequences’). Some types of endings are in one-to-one correspondence with bundles of morphosyntactic properties as they should be according to a classical morphemic approach, but others are not. Nevertheless, endings can be assigned a uniform role if the form-function-relationship is understood to be based on an alignment of formal and functional sequences. A diagrammatical form-function relationship is revealed that could not be captured in classical or refined morphemic approaches.