Characteristics of the Lithuanian language in AX Semantics
Fundamentals
In Lithuanian, you need to know the gender of a noun to form (together with number and case) the accompanying adjectives, determiners, numerals, and pronouns correctly.
Lithuanian has two genders for nouns: masculine, feminine. There are two numbers: singular and plural. Additionally, Lithuanian has seven cases for nouns.
| grammatical name | values | examples |
|---|---|---|
| gender (noun) | masculine | senasis gydytojas (the old doctor) |
| feminine | senoji moteris (the old woman) | |
| number | singular | senasis automobilis (the old car) |
| plural | senieji automobiliai (the old cars) | |
| cases | nominative | šuo (dog) |
| genitive | šuns skambutis (dog's bell) | |
| dative | Duodu kamuolį šuniui. (I give the ball to the dog.) | |
| accusative | Matau šunį. (I see the dog.) | |
| instrumental | Aklasis vaikšto su šuniu. (The blind man walks with a dog.) | |
| locative | Kaulas buvo šunyje. (The bone was in the dog.) | |
| vocative | Ei, šunie! (Hey, dog!) | |
| adjectives (noun) | before noun | raudonasis namas (red house) |
| verb tenses | present | Jis dìrba (he works) |
| past | Jis dìrbo (he worked) |
The standard order of a noun phrase in Lithuanian is the following:
preposition + determiner + numeral + adjective + noun
See for example:
apie šias tris populiarias knygas
about these three popular book
PREP DET NUM ADJ NOUN
"about these three popular books"
Lexicon
Nouns
Lithuanian nouns are inflected for number and case. When the lexicon entry is missing, the NLG platform will try to find the most probable gender based on heuristics. However, nouns should be added to the lexicon with their grammatical gender if they do not inflect regularly.
Lexicon entries for nouns may also be necessary for inflecting determiners, adjectives and pronouns correctly. They are omitted, if a lexicon entry is required, but missing.
Examples
The basic lexicon entry for šuo (dog) contains:
- gender: masculine
- inflection table for case and number:
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| Nominative | šuo | šunys |
| Genitive | šuns | šunų |
| Dative | šuniui | šunims |
| Accusative | šunį | šunis |
| Instrumental | šuniu | šunimis |
| Locative | šunyje | šunyse |
| Vocative | šunie | šunys |
Note
If you need lexicon entries for countries, contact support about that and you will get them for Lithuanian with automatic handling of prepositions.
Adjectives
In the lexicon, the inflection table encodes gender, case, and number. For adjective position, the default is "before noun". Unlike nouns, adjectives actually have three genders, but neuter adjectives are not used in noun phrases and are not inflected.
Verbs
Lithuanian verbs inflect for person, number, and tense. The most common verbs are encoded in our software. If a verb inflects incorrectly, you should add it to the lexicon.
Container settings
Determiner
The AX NLG platform supports the following determiners for Lithuanian: demonstrative, possessive, and quantifier (every). Lithuanian does not have definite and indefinite determiners.
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 | devynios dienos (nine days) | devintą dieną (the ninth day) |
| digit | 9 dienos (9 days) | 9. dieną (the 9th day) |
For Lithuanian, both cardinal and ordinal numerals up to 20 are written out on the platform. Additionally, cardinal numerals that are multiples of 10 up to 100 (e.g. 30, 40, etc.) are also written out. The outputs of other numerals are in digit form. Take cardinal numerals for example (written out vs. digit):
vienuolika automobilių
(eleven cars)
devyniasdešimt automobilių
(ninty cars)
vs.
101 automobilis
(101 cars)
Note that if cardinal numerals are written out, numerals ending with 1-9 will inflect for gender. However, this rule does not apply to teens (11-19). For example:
| cardinal numerals | example |
|---|---|
| 1-9 | aštuoni gydytojai [m.] (eight doctors [m.]) aštuonios moterys (eight women[f.]) |
| teens | aštuoniolika gydytojų (eighteen doctors[m.]) aštuoniolika moterų (eighteen women[f.]) |