maserati Posted March 8, 2006 Report Share Posted March 8, 2006 Are these sentences grammatical? And if not, could you rewrite for me or explain what’s wrong inside? Please After the court has inaugurated, the judge sentenced that his death penalty would be commuted to 20-year jail, due to his deep-regret. The fellow who is now holding an inauguration is a man of deceit. The history why be became a foxy man can go back to his teenager ship. One of his character is prone to foxy, after 2-year of the journey of a porter, he has gotten into the habit of always treat others with deceit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Free Thinker Posted March 8, 2006 Report Share Posted March 8, 2006 "Are these sentences grammatical?" What does that mean? Grammatically correct? Is this for a class or something? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lemuel Posted March 8, 2006 Report Share Posted March 8, 2006 Sounds like a direct translator program, like SysTran. The sheer absurdity is amusing, though. "The history why be became a foxy man can go back to his teenager ship." Where was my teenager ship!? And how does one make you a foxy man? I had a '79 Dodge Colt in high school ... is there some causal relationship I've been missing all these years? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eternal Posted March 8, 2006 Report Share Posted March 8, 2006 (edited) All Your Base Are Belong To Us!!! They have no plural nouns in Chinese, which makes sense. If you think about it, saying somethink like: "two books", is redundant. "Two book" conveys just as much information. Edited March 8, 2006 by Eternal Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidOdden Posted March 8, 2006 Report Share Posted March 8, 2006 This is a classical example of "syntactically (almost) well formed gibberish". A "grammatical sentence" is defined as any sentence that is generated by a grammar, so you have to specify the grammar you have in mind. There are entire theories of grammar which integrate compositional semantics, lexicon and constituent structure, under which this would be ungrammatical. Even under the strictest "form without meaning" theory, there are basic grammatical errors. The program screws up the rule for determiners in noun phrases, see "commuted to 20-year jail", also plurals as in "after 2-year of the journey". The double copula in "history why be became" is incompetent, the complement "foxy" in "is prone to foxy" a category error ("foxy" is an adjective, not a noun), and the verb-form under the complementizer "of" in "habit of always treat others" is wrong (it has to be a present participle / gerund). I would assume that this was a program output, where the programmer doesn't know English too well so doesn't know that it's producing syntactically bad output. But if this is a first try, say a one term class project, it's not too bad. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottyBogs Posted March 10, 2006 Report Share Posted March 10, 2006 What language did it start as? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AmbivalentEye Posted March 11, 2006 Report Share Posted March 11, 2006 Are these sentences grammatical? And if not, could you rewrite for me or explain what’s wrong inside? Please After the court has inaugurated, the judge sentenced that his death penalty would be commuted to 20-year jail, due to his deep-regret. The fellow who is now holding an inauguration is a man of deceit. The history why be became a foxy man can go back to his teenager ship. One of his character is prone to foxy, after 2-year of the journey of a porter, he has gotten into the habit of always treat others with deceit. After the court had inaugurated, the judge sentenced that his death penalty would be commuted to serve only a 20-year jail term, due to his deep-regret. The fellow who is now holding an inauguration is a man of deceit. The history of why be became a foxy man can betraced back to his teenship. I'm not even sure I know what this one is trying to say: One of his character is (prone to foxy?), after 2-year of the journey of a porter, he has gotten into the habit of always treat others with deceit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eternal Posted March 11, 2006 Report Share Posted March 11, 2006 I'm not even sure I know what this one is trying to say: One of his character is (prone to foxy?), after 2-year of the journey of a porter, he has gotten into the habit of always treat others with deceit. I'm pretty sure 'foxy' in this context will mean somebody who's sneaky and devious. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iouswuoibev Posted March 11, 2006 Report Share Posted March 11, 2006 I'm pretty sure 'foxy' in this context will mean somebody who's sneaky and devious. Or maybe foxy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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