From: Todd Benson <caduceass@...>
Date: 2008-05-25T03:14:18+09:00
Subject: Re: #plural? or #singular?

On Sat, May 24, 2008 at 11:14 AM, Axel Etzold <AEtzold@gmx.de> wrote:
>
>
> -------- Original-Nachricht --------
>> Datum: Sun, 25 May 2008 00:27:48 +0900
>> Von: "Robert Dober" <robert.dober@gmail.com>
>> An: ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org
>> Betreff: Re: #plural? or #singular?
>
>> On Sat, May 24, 2008 at 5:08 PM, Dave Bass <davebass@musician.org> wrote:
>> Even worse sometimes it is undefined I guess, or caption may play a role.
>>
>> I can see data.
>>
>> Maybe some native speakers will tell me that this is not a correct
>> sentence, I do not know, but than there is
>>
>> I can see Data.
>>
>> Languages (plural) are just a big mess (singular) ;)
>>
>> Robert
>> --
>> http://ruby-smalltalk.blogspot.com/
>>
>> ---
>> Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
>> Ludwig Wittgenstein
>
> Dear Robert and Dave,
>
> well, this is what tree-tagger (see tags output below, for the tagset
> see my previous post) says:
>
> I can see data. (noun plural)
> I can see Data. (proper noun singular)
> England is a country. (proper noun singular)
> England are bound to lose the match. (proper noun singular) (nobody is perfect).
> English is a language. (proper noun singular)
> The English are eccentric. (noun plural)
> Languages (noun plural) are just a big mess (noun singular).

You will always have problems with collective nouns (brood, flock,
pride, etc), especially if you train yourself on languages that aren't
spoken.

>
> Parts-of-speech tagging uses a Bayesian decision model, requiring
> training on a set of human-tagged text.
> There are large amounts of texts available for many languages, such
> as newspaper articles.
> The authors of tree-taggers claim about 96 % correct tagging somewhere
> in the docs ( can't find it right now).
> It's also fast - you can tag an entire novel in just a few seconds -
> and it's available for several major languages, not just English.

I think many people balk at your question because you didn't specify
the terms of the problem.  What language?  What vernacular?  What
venue?

cheerio (plural),
Todd