High Frequency Concepts, German Substantive Compounds and MT

MT research at the University of Washington was, as elsewhere in this country, sparked by Dr. Warren Weaver's "Memorandum" of July 15, 1949, and actually dates from November of that year. Very early in this research it became apparent that the most advanced methods and insights of modern linguistics are of great importance, but by no means sufficient to solve the linguistic problems with which we are confronted in MT. The reasons responsible for this insufficiency are the following: 1. Modern linguists either did not feel the need for, never intended or did not have the time to search for and supply that amount of analytic and descriptive detail which, while adding nothing to the capabilities of qualified human operators of language, is of paramount importance for the mechanization of the translation process. 2. Modern synchronic linguistics—and it is synchronic linguistics with which we are concerned here—largely limits itself to a study of languages in isolation, avoiding rather than encouraging a comparison between languages or a consideration of the phenomena of one language in the light of the phenomena of another. 3. An important and influential section of modern structural linguists would, as far as this is possible, rather exclude considerations of meaning in their linguistic work. 4. Modern synchronic linguists have, apart from their purely academic interests, the practical aim of improving the teaching of foreign languages rather than of the native language. Their pupils are not only animate, but also human operators, and before they