The Rumors System Of Russian Synthesis

The RUMORS synthesizer of Russian is a,~ integral part of the JM~AP experimental system of ,ht.pn.neseRussian antom.t~tic translation, although it cn,n also h~ve other ~ppliczrtions. Morphologically, it is based, primtrrily, on A.A.ZMizny~k's model of Russi~t. inflexion. Syntactical functions of RUMORS rely on word-order ~nd dependency d~t~ as input information. The synthesizer is implemented on IBM PC, MS DOS, in Turbo Pascal. 1 General informat ion The RUMORS system of RUssian MORphologicul and Syntactical synthesis has been developed as part of the JaRAP experimental system of Jt~p~neseRussian antoma~tic tra~sl~tion, described in (Modina,Shaly~pin~,1994). Its operation is, however, completely independent of the other components of the Jatl2kP system, so that RUMORS could be used in any other AT system irrespective of its source l~nguage. Basically, RUMORS constitutes a system in its own right, which can also be used for purposes other th~n tra~nsl~tion, e.g., as ~ computerized reference book of Russian morphology and the simplest phenomena of syntactic government a~td agreement (for students and teachers of Russian), ~ part of spell-checking system, etc. The RUMORS synthesizer has two m~jor modes of oper~tlon: the QUERY mode ttnd the TASK mode. In the QUERY mode of operr~tion, ItUMOItS accepts, as its input, a separate syntacticomorphological query (entered from the keybo~Lrd) which represents the lexeme to be processed ~nd the synttmtlcal.~.nd morphological ch araeteristics specifylag the word-form to be obtained by the processing. The output is, primarily, the desired word-form of the input lexeme or, if necessary, ~ periphrastic ~u6stitute for this word-form. After obtaining this output, the user c~t switch at will to the FULL PARADIGM submode of the QUERY mode. In this submode, RUMORS gener~rte8 all synthetic word-forms of the input lexeme (or of the l ~ t lexeme processed while obtaining a pcriphra~tic word-combina.tion). It n],o offers s. set of menus alIowing the user to modify his initial qlmry by choosing additions] morphologicM categorh~s from ~;lLese It] (2~rtll S. In the TASK mode~ the input d~t~ is i~ sequence. of queries fed from the special TASK file. Apart from lexical, morphological, and syntacticM inform~ tlon contained in eaclt query, the TASK mode of opertLtion m~kes considerable use of word order (l~t~ which is essential, axnong other things, for processing prepositional, adjectival and noun phrases. The output is the sequence of word-forms manifesting the phrases or sentences specified by the input sequence of queries. Both in the QUERY ttnd bt th.e TASK modes, the output is displayed on the screen and written slmultaneously in the speci~ SOLVE file. If required by the user, it may Mso include the alterations rome in the queries processed and the d~tubase informa~tion used in their processing. Inasmuch as the simulatio~t by RUMORS of ttte linguistic processes involved in tl.ussla~t synthesis is faithful enough, this ~uxillary d~ttL could be valuable by itself (e.g., for learning or teaching Russian), ~ide from its significance for debugging and controlling purposes. 2 Synthes is funct ions envisaged by RUMORS 2.1 M o r p h o h ) g i c a l f u n c t i o n s The morphologic~ functlolts of RUMORS cover HI aspects of Russia.n in~le:don, as well as some semr~nticMly bafic lcxico-morphologlcaJ relationships. '['he inlh:xiona] funet ions tLre initiated after the input query ha~ ~dreaxty been subjected to syntactical and lexieo-morphologlcal operations, which retry lltrve modified its htitial form. At this stage, ii: contMas nothing but the lexeme and the infiexiontd categories specifying its desired word-form. If some categories needed for complete specifictrtion of this word-form are not explicltly stated in the query, they are settled by default. E.g., a query containing nothing but the lexeme of a verb is taken to describe the finite