5.5 Convention

Typical UNL structures can be expressed by attribute, to avoid the complexity of enconversion and deconversion. These attributes do not express speaker’s information.

These attributes are used to express directly the information contained in the original sentence.

@pl

Plural
In case of expressing the plural of a countable noun in the original text, @pl is attached to the associated UW corresponding to the meaning of the noun.

There are two cases when @pl is not used:

  1. When the meaning does not express plurality, even though a noun appears in plural form. I.e Latin languages.

  2. When a foreign word is used because there is no appropriated equivalent in a language. I.e. in many Asian languages.

Example1 : In English
“Two persons…”

qua ( person.@pl.@entry, 2 )

Example 2 : In Chinese
“Liang ge ren…” (Two persons…)

qua ( person, 2 )

@angle_bracket

or

@<>

< > is used

@double_parenthesis

or

@(())

(( )) is used

@double_quotation

or

@“”

“ ” is used

@parenthesis

or

@()

( ) is used

@single_quotation

or

@‘’

‘ ’ is used

@square_bracket

or

@[]

[ ] is used

When these attributes appears in an UNL expression, it means that in the original sentence the corresponding convention signs are used, but this do not necessarily obligate to use the same convention signs in the output text. That is, certain language could have a different way to express the meaning of the convention marks.

There are two important points to care about:

  1. These attributes should mark the beginning and the end of the expression affected by the signs.

  2. The relation between the whole expression enclosed by the signs and the rest of the UNL expression.

The method to use convention mark is by using Scope

It consists on using a scope for the words or phrases affected by the marks and at the attribute associated with the mark to the Scope node, then use the appropriated Conceptual relation to associate the Scope node and the related UW. Most of the times 2mod” will be used.

Example 1

English      : UNL (An Electronic Language)
UNL           : mod ( UNL, :01.@parenthesis )
                 : mod :01 ( language.@entry, electronic )

 

Example 2

English      : “The child ( his mother I know ) is crying.”
UNL           : agt ( cry.@entry.@continue, child.@def )
                 : mod ( child.@def, :01.@parenthesis )
                 : obj:01 ( know.@entry, mother )
                 : agt:01 ( know.@entry, I )
                 : pos:01 ( mother, child.@def )

Explanation
In example 2, there are two linkages between the sentence in parenthesis and words “the child”. One is mod ( child.@def, :01.@parenthesis ), this means, the whole sentence in parenthesis modifies “the child”. Another is pos:01 ( mother, child.@def ), shows the meaning of “his mother”. The first linkage is absolutely necessary, because it links the part in parenthesis and the related words in the sentence, without this linkage, it would be difficult to control the deconvertion of this sentence. The second linkage depends on the meaning of the words in parenthesis.

Exceptions:

1.        When the whole expression is affected by this kind of mark, it is not possible to use Scope. (We have to apply the rule that said that it is not possible to create a Scope at the top level.

Example 3

English      : [ Exception 1 ]
UNL           : mod ( exception.@entry.@square_bracket, 1 )

2.        When the expression affect by this kind of marks is only one word, it is not possible to use Scope.

Example 4

English      : Universal Networking Language (UNL) is a …
UNL           : cnt ( Universal Networking Language, UNL.@ parenthesis )

last updated 2000/09/21