Characteristics of the German Language in AX Semantics
Fundamentals
German has three genders for nouns: masculine, feminine, and neuter. There are two numbers: singular and plural. Gender and number influence the inflection of determiners, adjectives, numerals and preposition-determiner contractions (e.g., von
+ dem
= vom
). German nouns have four cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative. The adjectives are extremely regular and exceptions should be covered in the lexicon.
Grammatical Name | Values | Examples |
---|---|---|
gender | masculine | der neue Hafen (the new port) |
feminine | die neue Tasche (the new bag) | |
neuter | das neue Haus (the new house) | |
number | singular | ein rotes Haus (a red house) |
plural | zwei große Häfen (two big harbors) | |
cases (noun) | nominative | Der Hund (the dog) |
accusative | Ich sehe den Hund. (I see the dog.) | |
genitive | Das Spielzeug des Hundes (The dog’s toy) | |
dative | Ich gebe dem Hund seinen Ball. (I give the ball to the dog.) | |
adjectives | before noun | groß (big) |
verb tenses | present | er/sie/es geht |
past | er/sie/es ging | |
past participle | er/sie/es ist gegangen |
The standard order of a noun phrase in German is the following: preposition + determiner + numeral + adjective + noun
.
See for example:
über diese drei beliebten Bücher
about these three popular books[pl]
PREP DET NUM ADJ NOUN
"about these three popular books"
Lexicon
Nouns
For German nouns in LEXICON, gender is required and the inflection table needs to encode the case and number. The preposition switch and determiner switch are also available.
WARNING
If the lexicon entry is missing, a warning will show up on the platform, because the container cannot render the noun phrase without a gender.
Examples
A basic lexicon entry for Haus (house) contains
- gender: neuter
- inflection table for case and number:
Singular | Plural | |
---|---|---|
Nominative | Haus | Häuser |
Genitive | Hauses | Häuser |
Dative | Haus | Häusern |
Accusative | Haus | Häuser |
The lexicon entry for Australien (Australia) contains:
- gender, case, and number (like above inflection table)
- remove all definite determiners
And the lexicon entry for Malta (Malta) contains:
- gender, case, and number (like above inflection table)
- remove all definite determiners
- replace preposition
in
withauf
indative
And the lexicon entry for Seychellen (Seychelles) contains:
- gender, case, and number (like above inflection table)
- always set a definite determiner
- replace preposition
in
withauf
indative
- replace preposition
nach
withauf
inaccusative
note
If you need lexicon entries for countries, write to the support about that and you will get them for German with automatic handling of determiners.
Adjectives
The adjectives in German are very regular. There should be no need to add a new adjective to the lexicon.
Verbs
Our software covers the most common verbs. However, you should add the verb to the lexicon if you find a verb inflect inaccurately.
Container settings
Determiner
The AX NLG platform supports the following determiners for German: definite, indefinite, demonstrative, possessive, and quantifier (every).
Numerals
The noun will automatically agree with the numeral number when you use a numeral variable. There is no need to add additional branches for numeral. Four types of numerals are possible on the AX NLG platform: cardinal, cardinal as digit, ordinal, and ordinal as digit.
cardinal | ordinal | |
---|---|---|
text | Neun Mäuse in meinem Zimmer. (Nine mice in my room.) | Der neunte Tag in der Schule. (The ninth day at school.) |
digit | 9 Mäuse in meinem Zimmer. (9 mice in my room.) | Der 9. Tag in der Schule. (The 9th day at school.) |
For German, both cardinal and ordinal numerals are written out until 100, otherwise (above 100) the output is in digit form. Take cardinal numerals for example:
einhundert Autos
(one hundred cars)
101 Autos
(101 cars)
Prepositions and determiners: contractions
If users configure prepositions and determiners in the container, prepositions are automatically joined with determiners for the following prepositions: an
, bei
, in
, von
, and zu
. For example, the preposition bei
and the article dem
(singular dative masculine) are contracted to beim
, but bei
and der
(singular dative feminine) stay separate as bei der
.
Determiner switch
If there are definite determiners (i.e. for country names) for a noun phrase, they don't necessarily have to be activated for the container, they can be added via the lexicon, instead. This assumes "without definite article" is the default. In the first example, no article is added to "Australia".
On the AX NLG platform, the settings for the container "Australien" are: preposition="nach"
and case="accusative"
.
Sie reisten von Paris nach Australien.
(They were traveling from Paris to Australia.)
With a different country (i.e. "Seychelles"), the platform settings are the same as above (preposition="nach"
and case="accusative"
), but the lexical information changes the result:
Sie reisten von Paris auf die Seychellen.
(They were traveling from Paris to the Seychelles.)
Here the definite article die
(female, plural) is added to "Seychellen" and the preposition is automatically changed from nach
to auf
according to the information from the lexicon.
Preposition switch
A similar switch could happen for the preposition. This assumes that the preposition + case for the "non-island country" (e.g., Australia) is the default (e.g., nach
+ accusative
and in
+ dative
). For example, the setting for the below example is: preposition="in"
and case="dative"
.
Sie leben in Australien.
(They live in Australia.)
For the second example, the container settings for the noun are still the same (preposition="in"
and case="dative"
), but the preposition switches from 'in' to 'auf' for "Malta" because of the lexicon information:
Sie leben auf Malta.
(They live in Malta.)
A preposition switch also happens for "Seychellen", where den
is the definite article for plural dative.
Sie leben auf den Seychellen.
(They live in the Seychelles.)
Language Variants
The AX NLG platform offers 4 variants of the German language:
- Germany
- Austria
- Luxembourg
- Switzerland
They only differ slightly in lexicon and phonology. For example "Tram" (tram) is feminine in Germany ("die Tram") but neutral in Switzerland ("das Tram"), which makes it necessary to have different lexicon entries in the two language variants.