Dr. Gayane Hovhanisian shared these Q and A with permission to use in my research.
I added comments and links in chatGPT answers.
Can you help me find in the internet Armenian-English and English-Armenian parallel texts?
Certainly! There are several online resources where you can find Armenian-English and English-Armenian parallel texts. Here are a few websites you can explore:
Targmanel: Targmanel is a bilingual Armenian-English platform that provides parallel texts, including literary works, news articles, and other written materials. You can search for specific texts or browse through their collection. [AH: I was unable to find his platform: hallucination?]
Armtimes: Armtimes is an Armenian news website that covers various topics. They often provide bilingual articles in Armenian and English, making it a useful resource for parallel texts.
Armenian National Corpus: The Armenian National Corpus is a linguistic resource that contains a vast collection of Armenian texts. While it doesn't specifically offer parallel texts, you can search for specific phrases or sentences in both Armenian and English to find corresponding instances. [AH: I tried searching for diamond and chair: got Error in query component. word: [{դիամոնդ}, {ծհաիր}] ]
Lingvo Universal: Lingvo Universal is an online dictionary that offers translations between multiple languages, including Armenian and English. While it may not provide full parallel texts, you can search for individual words or phrases to see their translations in both languages. [AH: Could not go beyond Russian word lookup for a given English. This is what the description says: Lingvo Dictionary helps easily translate words and phrases from English into Russian and from Russian into English, as well as to and from Spanish, Italian, French, German and many other languages.]
Additionally, you can try searching for specific topics or books that have been translated into Armenian and English. Libraries, bookstores, and online platforms like Amazon may have bilingual editions or translations available.
Remember that the availability of parallel texts can vary, and it may require some effort to find specific resources depending on the content you are looking for.
Are there any Armenian language corpora or datasets for free access?
Yes, there are Armenian language corpora and datasets available for free access. Here are a few resources where you can find Armenian language data:
ArmTDP: ArmTDP (Armenian Treebank Development Project) is a project that aims to create a syntactically annotated treebank for the Armenian language. They provide a publicly accessible dataset that includes parsed Armenian sentences. You can access the dataset and download it from their website.
ArCrawl: ArCrawl is an Armenian web corpus that collects and provides a large collection of Armenian language data from various websites. It includes text from different domains such as news, blogs, forums, and more. The corpus is available for free and can be accessed through the Natural Language Processing Laboratory of Yerevan State University. [AH: The link I found is to a Web site building tool. It looks like that the last sentence belongs to answer #1.]
Open Armenian WordNet: Open Armenian WordNet is a lexical database that contains word meanings, relationships, and semantic networks for Armenian words. It is freely accessible and can be useful for natural language processing tasks. [AH: Extremely strange page for Armenian.]
Apertium Armenian Resources: Apertium is an open-source machine translation platform, and they provide Armenian language resources, including bilingual dictionaries and parallel corpora. These resources can be accessed and utilized for research or language-related projects.
When working with these datasets or corpora, it's important to review any terms of use or licensing restrictions that may be associated with the specific resources to ensure proper usage and citation.
Additionally, academic institutions or research organizations in Armenia may have their own language resources or datasets that are available for academic or research purposes. Exploring the websites of universities or language research centers in Armenia may provide additional resources or information.
what are your rules for word formation in Armenian?
Armenian has its own rules and patterns for word formation. Here are some common rules and processes for word formation in Armenian:
Affixation: Affixation is the process of adding prefixes or suffixes to a root word to create new words. In Armenian, both prefixes and suffixes can be attached to the root word to modify its meaning or grammatical function. For example, adding the suffix "-ակ" (-ak) to the noun "դպրոց" (school) forms the noun "դպրոցակ" (schoolboy/girl). [AH: It figured one of the meaning of -ակ correctly.]
Compounding: Compounding involves combining two or more root words to form a new word. In Armenian, compounds are formed by joining words together without significant changes to the original words. For example, the words "ազգ" (nation) and "վարույթ" (power) can be combined to create the compound word "ազգավարույթ" (national power). [AH: interesting to know what in the machine learning data made the inference of , վար-ույթ -> po-wer : վար-իչ, [կառ-ա-]վար-ել, go-ver-n-ment, гу-бер-н-атор, cy-ber-n-etics. Latinists (or rather linguist-archeologists) might be able to figure if the -wer, վար, -ver, -ber- roots for the same meaning. Աճառյան` ուղղել, ղեկավարել, գործը առաջ տանիլ. վարելու իմաստն է գերակշռում. նշում է նաեւ` вес-ти, вод-ить]
Reduplication: Reduplication involves repeating a part or the entire word to create a new word. It is used for emphasis, intensification, or to indicate plurality in some cases. For example, the noun "գործ" (work) can be reduplicated to form the noun "գործգործ" (lots of work). [AH. This is also very interesting. in Armenian it is not exactly for indicating [objects] plurality, but rather intensity, repetitivity - "plurality" of action.]
Conversion: Conversion, also known as zero derivation, involves using a word from one grammatical category as another category without any affixation. This process allows a word to change its part of speech without any changes in its form. For example, the noun "կար" (stone) can be used as a verb "կարել" (to stone). [AH. This is remarkable for several reasons: 1) it contradicts itself - "without any affixation"; then 2) it selects close, but not exact word քար, and finally 3) builds a wrong verb correctly.]
Back-formation: Back-formation is the creation of a new word by removing what appears to be a suffix from an existing word. This process is relatively rare in Armenian but can occur in certain cases. An example is the noun "բնակարան" (apartment), which is derived from the verb "բնակել" (to live) through back-formation. [AH. I am not sure that back-formation is important in Armenian - this is probably for linguist-archeologists too. I can think of էլեկտրիֆիկաց-ում and similar (գուգլ-ել ?).]
These are just some of the word formation processes in Armenian. The language exhibits a rich and diverse vocabulary created through these and other rules, allowing for the formation of new words and the expansion of its lexicon.
The answer to the last questions are very intriguing. If the the hypothesis of "poverty of Armenian input" is true then these can be considered as glimpses or reasoning. I better contact the Mechanistic Interpretability group. They might have some knowledge and tools.
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