Characteristics of the Swedish language in AX Semantics
Fundamentals
In Swedish, you need to know the gender of a noun to form (together with number, case and definiteness) the accompanying adjectives, determiners, numerals, and pronouns correctly.
Swedish has two genders for nouns: neuter and common. There are two numbers: singular and plural. Additionally, Swedish has two cases for nouns: nominative and genitive.
| grammatical name | values | examples |
|---|---|---|
| gender | neuter | det nya huset (the new house) |
| common | den nya tröjan (the new sweater) | |
| number | singular | ny klocka (new watch) |
| plural | nya klockor (new watches) | |
| cases (noun) | nominative | tröja (sweater) |
| genitive | tröjas | |
| adjectives (noun) | before noun | rött äpple (red apple) |
| verb tenses | present | han går (he goes) |
| past | han gick (he went) |
The standard order of a noun phrase in Swedish is the following:
preposition + determiner + numeral + adjective + noun
See for example:
om dessa tre populära böcker
about these three popular books[pl]
PREP DET NUM ADJ NOUN
"about these three popular books"
Lexicon
Nouns
Swedish nouns are inflected for number (singular/plural), case (nominative/genitive), and definiteness (indefinite/definite). If the lexicon entry is missing, the NLG platform tries 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 tröja (sweater) contains:
- gender: common
- inflection table for case and number:
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| Nominative | tröja | tröjor |
| Genitive | tröjas | tröjors |
The lexicon above expects the indefinite forms of the noun. The definite forms are automatically inflected as the below examples:
bikini -> bikinin
poncho -> ponchon
Note
If you need lexicon entries for countries, write to the support about that and you will get them for Swedish with automatic handling of prepositions.
Adjectives
In the lexicon, the inflection table for gender, case, number and definiteness can be encoded. For adjective position, the default is "before noun".
Verbs
The most common verbs are encoded in our software. If a verb inflects incorrectly, you should add it to the lexicon.
Container settings
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 | nio dagar (nine days) | den nionde dagen (the ninth day) |
| digit | 9 dagar (9 days) | den 9. dagen (the 9th day) |
For Swedish, both cardinal and ordinal numerals are written out until 12 on the platform, otherwise (above 12) the output is in digit form. Take cardinal numerals for example:
tolv bilar
(twelve cars)
vs.
13 bilar
(13 cars)
Determiners
The AX NLG platform supports the following determiners for Swedish: definite, indefinite, demonstrative, relative, and possessive.
The definite article in Swedish is mostly expressed by a suffix on the noun. An additional definite article is only added to noun phrases with adjectives or numerals, see for example:
flaska (bottle)
vs.
flaskan (the bottle)
vs.
den nya flaskan (the new bottle)
Preposition switch
On the AX NLG platform, the settings for the container Tyskland (Germany) are: preposition="i" and case="nom".
i Tyskland
(in Germany)
For the below sentence with a different place (i.e. Island), the platform settings are the same as above (preposition="i", case="nom"), but the lexical information changes the preposition and shows a switch from i to på:
på Island
(on Iceland)