A development tool for linguistic rules
Hugo C. van Leeuwen · TU/e Research Portal · 1989
Linguistic re-write rules are very popular in phonology, as they are well suited to describe phonological processes. These rules can also well be used for string manipulation such as grapheme-to-phoneme (spelling-to-sound) conversion, which is needed in text-to-speech systems. In this paper a tool is presented with which one can develop and test a set of linguistic rules which, together, define a scheme to convert an input string to an output string. One possible application is the design of a grapheme-to-phoneme conversion system. The system is approached from the point of view of linguists, since they are the main users of such a system. The linguist has to specify conversion data, which together with the development system form a conversion system. First the basic system is discussed, viz. the format in which the linguist must present the information, followed by a discussion of how the system supports the development of linguistic rules. A special characteristic of the system is that input-to-output relations are being preserved. Given a rulebase which defines a grapheme-to-phoneme conversion, the system can be used as an analysis tool for statistics on grapheme-to-phoneme relations. The paper is concluded with the discussion of some additional characteristics of the system, which are compared to those of some other systems, and a survey of the applications in which it is used.