Characteristics of the Romansh language in AX Semantics
Fundamentals
In Romansh, you need to know the gender and number of a noun to form the accompanying adjectives, determiners, pronouns, and numerals correctly.
Romansh has two genders for nouns: masculine and feminine. There are two numbers: singular and plural. The AX NLG platform uses nominative as the default case for Romansh, even though Romansh has no grammatical cases generally.
| grammatical name | values | examples |
|---|---|---|
| gender | masculine | buob giuven (young boy) |
| feminine | mamma giuvna (young mother) | |
| number | singular | chasa granda (big house) |
| plural | chasas **** grandas (big houses) | |
| adjectives (noun) | after noun | mail cotschen (red apple) |
| verb tenses | present | el gida (he helps) |
| past | el gidava (he helped) |
The standard order of a noun phrase in Romansh is the following: preposition + determiner + numeral + noun + adjective. See for example:
da quests trais cudeschs novs
about these three books new
PREP DET NUM NOUN ADJ
"about these three new books"
Lexicon
Nouns
Romansh nouns inflect for number. Nouns should be added to the lexicon if they are not regular.
Lexicon entries for nouns may also be necessary for inflecting determiners, adjectives, numerals and pronouns correctly. They are omitted, if a lexicon entry is required, but missing.
Examples
The basic lexicon entry for chasa (house) contains:
- gender: feminine
- inflection table for case and number:
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| Nominative | chasa | chasas |
Adjectives
In Romansh, the default position for an adjective is "after noun". In the inflection table gender and number can be encoded.
Verbs
Romansh verbs inflect for person, number, and tense. 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 Romansh: definite, indefinite, demonstratives (distal + proximal), personal 2nd plural, and possessives.
Pronoun
The AX NLG platform supports the following pronouns for Romansh: personal, demonstrative (proximal), and possessives.
Numerals
Four types of numerals are possible on the AX NLG platform: cardinal, cardinal as digit, ordinal, and ordinal as digit. Take di (day) for example:
| cardinal | ordinal | |
|---|---|---|
| text | nov dis (nine days) | il novavel di (the ninth day) |
| digit | nov dis (9 days) | il 9. di (the 9th day) |
For Romansh, both cardinal and ordinal numerals are written out until 20 on the platform, otherwise (above 20) the output is in digit form. Take cardinal numerals for example:
ventg chauns
(twenty dogs)
vs.
21 chauns
(21 dogs)
Contractions
On the AX NLG platform, Romansh prepositions (e.g. a or da) are automatically joined with determiners . For example, the preposition da is contracted with the definite article il:
dal bap (about the father) [da + il = dal]
Similar to contractions with prepositions, Romansh determiners contract with the next word automatically if it starts with a vowel. See for example:
il + ami = l'ami (the friend)
ina + amia = in'amia (a girlfriend)
Determiner switch
Determiners can be switched according to lexical information. If you set the determiner switch for a specific noun in the lexicon, it will automatically switch to another determiner when you add the determiner you intend to switch in the container.