LEXICON

The Lexicon is a tool that holds the grammatical information in a project about particular domain specific words that the software needs to generate linguistically correct units.

TIP

To distinguish lemma and stem: a stem is the part of a word that does not change.

• stem: creat for *to create (verb) or creative (adjective) or creation (noun).
• lemma: create (verb), creative (adjective) and creation (noun)

While the software already stores this kind of information about many of the most common words in all languages in a global lexicon, the project lexicons include the words that come from domain knowledge. The global lexicon cannot be edited directly, all your entries and changes enter the project lexicon.

In your translation package you will find lexicon items to translate. That usually means that a word is missing from your project or global lexicon and a container does need the respective information.

You can detect that by checking whether a grammatical interpretation of a word in a container is wrong, or a word has different grammar requirements for your use case. Lexicon entries only have to be made for words that require grammatical flexibility, i.e. for which containers have been created. Words that are used in static text parts do not need lexicon entries.

Settings in lexicon entries

Settings for Nouns

The lexicon is the place where the information is stored that is necessary to inflect nouns in a grammatically correct way and to use pronouns properly. What information this is differs in many languages.

For nouns this comprises for example:

number	singular, dual, plural
grammatical gender	masculine, feminine, neutral, animate, inanimate
grammatical cases	nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, locative, vocative, instrumental, ablative

Plurale Tantum (Plural only)

If the noun for which you want to create an entry occurs only in the plural form, set the slider to plurale tantum. Then only fields for the plural forms that are actually required will appear in the fields below.

Switch Determiner

Some nouns differ from standard behavior and combine with different determiners than other nouns from the same type. You can configure multiple alternate determiners and specify with which grammatical forms they will appear.

Example: Nouns denoting countries usually stand with the none determiner like Poland, but the Netherlands need a definite determiner, so you define a replacement here.

Switch Preposition

As with the determiner, there is also deviant behavior with some nouns when using prepositions. Therefore you can enter these cases here.

Example: Nouns denoting places usually stand with the preposition in like in Germany, but there are some exceptions like at Shibuya station.

Settings for Adjectives

The settings for adjective are similar to the settings for nouns.

Adjective Position: You have to define if the adjective stands before or after a noun.

Setting for Verbs

For verbs you have to fill the conjugations of the verbs, this means how the verb will form under different circumstances.

The conjugations of the verbs depend on different grammatical information that include the number (singular, plural in some languages also dual) and distinct between the speaker (first person), the addressee (second person), and others (third person). All these conjugations must also be completed for the different tenses.

Overview of the basic grammatical persons & tenses you can define in the lexicon:

grammatical persons	first, second, third
number	singular, dual, plural
grammatical gender	masculine, feminine, neutral, animate, inanimate
tenses	present, past, imperfect, future, past participle, gerund

Missing lexicon entries

The most common way to spot that grammatical information is missing is the occurrence of such mistakes as missing determiners or a wrong declension for a noun. If such mistakes occur in your test content, chances are high that a missing lexicon entry might be the cause of that irregularity. Thus, an adequate solution for grammar errors often contains adding new words to the lexicon. The missing lexicon entries give you an impression about which words are used in your data and what you need to do.

TIP

If words are not listed in either the global or project lexicon, they are adapted according to the usual linguistic standards of the respective language.