LING 571

Homework 9 (100 pts)

Due 12/6/05 (not 12/1/05)

Choose a non-English language that you are familiar with. Let us call it F. In this homework, you will compare F and English. Please ignore all the differences with respect to inflection and agreement, such as inflection for gender, number, person, tense, etc. To complete your homework, feel free to consult any grammar books and/or dictionaries.

(1) (10 pts) “Homonymy/Polysemy” in F: A content word (noun, verb, adjective, or adverb) in F could have multiple unrelated translations in English. List five of such words in F, and for each one, give its English translations. The more unrelated the English translations are, the better. (similar to the “bank” example)

(2) (15 pts) Lexical gap: F may have words/phrases that represent concepts that do not exist in English. List five of such words, and explain the concepts. (similar to the “go Greek” example)

(3) (15 pts) More distinction in F: F could make more distinction than English for some concepts. As a result, English will have only one word for the concept, while F would have more. List five such English words. For each English word, list its translations in F and explain the differences between the translations (cf. the “aunt” example).

(4) (10 pts) Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: what’s your opinion about the weaker version of the hypothesis? In other words, do you think that your thought is affected by the language you use? Give some evidence to support your viewpoint.

(5) (10 pts) Let’s assume that you talk to someone, and both of you speak English and F equally well. Nevertheless, you may prefer to use one language over the other in certain settings. List five such settings when this happens and in each setting explain why you think you prefer one language over the other.

(6) (10 pts) Word order: List five cases where the word orders in English and F are different. If possible, represent each case as a transfer rule (e.g., adj + N è N + adj)

(7) (15 pts) List three linguistic phenomena in F that do not exist in English (e.g., scrambling in German). Explain how you plan to handle these phenomena in your MT system.

(8) (15 pts) List three differences between F and English which you have not mentioned already and which you think will make the F-E translation difficult. Explain how you plan to handle these phenomena in your MT system.

Submit your report via ESubmit, and give a hardcopy to me. You can do it at any time before 4:30pm on 12/6/05.

Note: this is an individual homework, not a team project.