Characteristics of the Latin language in AX Semantics
Fundamentals
In Latin, you need to know the gender of the noun in order to form the accompanying determiners, adjectives, and numerals correctly.
Latin has three genders for nouns: masculine, feminine and neuter. There are two numbers: singular and plural. Additionally, Latin has six cases for nouns.
| grammatical name | values | examples |
|---|---|---|
| genders | masculine | domus magnus (big house) |
| feminine | filia magna (big daughter) | |
| neuter | bellum magnum (big war) | |
| numbers | singular | bellum magnum (a great war) |
| plural | duo bella magna (two great wars) | |
| cases (noun) | nominative | liber (book) |
| genitive | titulus librī (the book's title) | |
| dative | librō | |
| accusative | Video librum. (I see the book.) | |
| ablative | Multa didici ex librō. (I learned a lot from the book.) | |
| vocative | liber | |
| adjectives (noun) | before noun | magnus domus |
| after noun (default) | domus magnus | |
| verb tenses | present | is videt (he sees) |
| past | is vidit (he saw) |
The standard order of a noun phrase in Latin is the following:
preposition + determiner + numeral + noun + adjective
See for example:
de his tribus libris popularibus
about these three books[pl] popular
PREP DET NUM NOUN ADJ
"about these three popular books"
Lexicon
Nouns
For Latin nouns, the lexicon needs to encode gender, case, and determiner changes. The plural forms should be added to the lexicon if they are not regular.
Examples
The basic lexicon entry for aqua (water) contains:
- gender: f
- inflection table for case and number:
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| Nominative | aqua | aquae |
| Genitive | aquae | aquārum |
| Dative | aquae | aquīs |
| Accusative | aquam | aquās |
| Ablative | aquā | aquīs |
| Vocative | aqua | aquae |
Adjectives
In the lexicon, the inflection table for gender, case, and number can be encoded. For adjective position, the default is "after noun".
Verbs
The most common verbs are encoded in our software. If a verb inflects the wrong way, you should add it to the lexicon.
Container settings
Determiner
The AX NLG platform supports the following determiners for Latin: demonstrative, distal, medial, relative and possessive.
Numerals
The noun will automatically agree with the numeral number when a numeral variable is used. Four types of numerals are possible on the AX NLG platform: cardinal, cardinal as digit, ordinal, and ordinal as digit.
| cardinal | ordinal | |
|---|---|---|
| text | novem dies (nine days) | nonus dies (the ninth day) |
| digit | 9 dies (9 days) | 9. dies (the 9th day) |
For Latin, cardinal and ordinal numerals up to 20 and multiples of 10 up to 100 (e.g. 30, 40, etc.) are written out on the platform. The outputs of other numerals are in digit form. Take cardinal numerals for example (written out vs. digit):
viginti cars
(twenty cars)
octoginta cars
(eighty cars)
vs.
21 cars
(21 cars)
Preposition switch
On the AX NLG platform the settings for the container "Iaponiam" (Japan) are: preposition="in" and case="accusative".
Ex Germania in Iaponiam volant.
(They are flying from Germany to Japan.)
For the below sentence but with a different country (i.e. the United States), the platform settings are the same as above (preposition="in" and case="accusative"), but the lexical information changes the result:
Ex Germania ad Civitates Foederatas volant.
(They fly from Germany to the United States.)
The second example shows the preposition switch from in to ad for "Civitates Foederatas" (the United States).