LINGUIST List 2.806

Wed 20 Nov 1991

Disc: Spanish Inversion, Grammar Checkers

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. , spanish inversion
2. , grammar/stype checker
3. Koenraad De Smedt, grammar checkers

One article that comes to mind is:
 Lantolf, James P. 1980. "Evolutive change in syntax: Interrogative
 word order in Puerto Rican Spanish. Frank H. Nuessel, Jr., ed.,
 _Contemporary studies in Romance languages. Proceedings of the
 eighth annual symposium on Romance languages. Bloomington, IN:
 IULC.
An interesting fact about this is that std Spanish allows no inversion
with some question words, notably POR QUE (why), as in:
 Por que' tu' no quieres venir?
An interesting paper on Spanish inversion (though i don't care for the
theoretical orientation) is:
 Torrego, Esther. 1984. "On inversion in Spanish and some of its
 effects. _Linguistic Inquiry_ 15.1.
Good luck, and please send in your findings.
Jon Aske

Hi,
This is to reponse to Arie Verhagen's request about style or grammar checker.
I have used some of these commercial products. But I must say I am not too
happy about them. Most systems grade the text with some scales to indicate
the degree of difficulty of it. It alter the users whenever it finds a
sentence in passive voice, or when the length of a sentence exceeds certain
number. Some other also check verb noun agreement, the use of article (a, the)
and whether a sentence is completed. However, they warn the users that they must
have certain 'minimum' command of the language, ie English. They all fail to
Sometimes, they fail to locate some very simple grammr mistakes.
Speed can also be a problem.
Lua K T
> lua kim teng ( REPLIES to LUAKTNUSDISCS.BITNET)
> National University of Singapore
> Department of Information Systems and Computer Science

In response to the query on grammar checkers: there is also a system called
CORRIE that is different from others in the sense that it
- does grammar-based spelling checking rather than grammar and style;
- works on Dutch, and is aimed at specific Dutch grammar and spelling
 problems, e.g. verbal inflections, subject-verb agreement,
 determiner-adjective-noun agreement, soundalikes, and newonewordcompounds;
- runs on UNIX machines and is aimed at large publishers rather than PC users;
The system was developed by Stichting Cognitieve Technologie,
contact adijkstranici.kun.nl
K. de Smedt