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Jono and I had a good conversation this morning on IRC about the remaining Big Issues which are blocking the release of Parser 2 as the default parser for Ubiquity. Here are our Top 4 Big Issues:

1. Some commands’ preview’s and execute’s are not working properly (trac #652). This could be an underlying issue with some pipes not rerouted correctly in Parser 2, or it could be that the commands have not been rewritten correctly to take advantage of Parser 2.
2. Flesh out how to localize resources, like commands and nountypes. We started a conversation on this subject a few weeks ago but we never reached a resolution. This blocks issues 3 and 4 below.
3. We need to standardize a format for commands for Parser 2. As noted in last week’s meeting (among other places) Parser 2 will require at least some modification to all commands. Jono and I came up with a simple hybrid format for commands which specify takes and modifiers for Parser 1 and arguments for Parser 2, but until we figure out how exactly the localization of commands will work, we can’t write a definitive standard.
4. Enable nountype localization. While the most popular nountypes used are those that ship with Ubiquity, it is important to come up with a localization process which can apply to custom nountypes as well. Nountype localizations need the ability to either (1) replace the _name only, or (2) replace both the _name and the suggest() logic, as both cases will be necessary.

Given that Big Issue 3 and Big Issue 4 are both dependent on Big Issue 2, there clearly needs to be a continued public discussion of how we should make these resources localizable. I look forward to this discussion taking place at tomorrow’s joint (general + i18n) Ubiquity meeting.

In other news, here are some Small Issues:

1. Add a switch for parser version and language settings: Jono’s already made a space for this in the new “Settings and Skins” page in about:ubiquity. He’s on it. Like a bonnet.
2. Magic word (anaphor) substitution is not yet working properly. This needs to work both when there is an explicit magic word and when there are simply missing arguments.
3. The position of suggested verbs is always sentence-initial (trac #655). This also requires that we can specify whether verb name localizations are sentence-initial forms or sentence-final forms.¹
4. …

Let’s hit the code!

A recently hot topic of discussion in the Ubiquity i18n realm has been how to deal with strongly case-marking languages. As we continue to make steady progress, this is one of remaining open questions which we must decide as a community how to tackle in Parser 2.

Introduction

Grammatical case is a marking on nouns that express grammatical function. Not all languages exhibit case. In many of the Indo-European languages we hope to bring Ubiquity to, case is realized as a suffix.¹

Here’s a classic example of case from Latin. (Line 2 is the gloss of 1, line 4 of 3.)

1
2
3
4

canis      virum      momordit
dog=sg.NOM man=sg.ACC bite=3sg.perfect
vir        canem      momordit
man=sg.NOM dog=sg.ACC bite=3sg.perfect

Example (1) is “the man bit the dog,” while example (3) is “the dog bit the man.” The only difference, as you see in the gloss, is that the nouns canis and vir are marked with different case endings in the two sentences. By marking the nouns with different cases (here, nominative and accusative), their semantic roles in the sentence—which is the the biter and which is the bitee—can be identified unambiguously. (Their positions are also switched in these examples but in reality Latin has a very free word order—the same sentences with other word orders including OSV or VSO are also common.)

At first glance, strongly case-marked languages may look like a godsend for identifying the semantic roles of arguments.² If we can easily and unambiguously recognize arguments’ cases to put them in their appropriate semantic roles, this could simplify processing as well as make Ubiquity input follow a natural syntax for such languages. Unfortunately, there are some significant challenges which must be overcome in order to make the processing of case-markers worthwhile.

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