Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!sunic!uupsi!nyser!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!ireqs3!ireq-robot!gamin
From: gamin@ireq-robot.UUCP (Martin Boyer)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: wanted "French digital dictionary"
Summary: Is simple-minded better than nothing?
Keywords: Spell, French, conjugation
Message-ID: <112@amadeus.UUCP>
Date: 12 Jan 90 06:14:36 GMT
Reply-To: gamin@ireq-robot.UUCP (Martin Boyer)
Organization: Laboratoire de robotique, Institut de recherche d'Hydro-Quebec
Lines: 57


clement@opus.UUCP (Clement Pellerin):

>We would buy a French digital dictionary if only we could find one.

gamin@ireq-robot.UUCP (Martin Boyer):

>[Let's get organized and see how we can hack a version of spell to handle
>French]

lamy@cs.utoronto.ca (Jean-Francois Lamy):

>Spelling checking is more difficult in languages where number and gender
>agreement is an issue.  A simple-minded approach like that of spell or ispell
>would give you an immense number of false errors.
>[...]
>So let me go on record as extremely skeptical that anything
>useful would come out of a simple minded approach [...]

clement@opus.cs.mcgill.ca (Clement Pellerin):

>[...]
>Nevertheless, I consider that simple minded help is better than nothing.  I
>would settle for anything that would lookup every word in the dictionary to
>see if it is present or not.  [...]

I am an optimist by nature and sometimes by choice because it helps to get
things done.  I would go with Clement Pellerin and say that even an
incomplete solution would help.  I would be happy with a database of nouns
and no verbs but the numerous variations of "avoir" (to have) and "^etre"
(to be) because this is where we would get the most for our investment.

Jean-Francois is probably right, however, in pointing out that a
simple-minded approach will yield an immense number of false errors.  It is
quite possible that "filtering" a perfectly correct text through such a
filter would produce the list of all the words, or variations of words,
that our French speller doesn't know about.

Is there a way to have a "loose" checker that would only flag words that
are misspelled "for sure" and disregard those words that it doesn't know
about.  If, for instance, something like the soundex algorithm, which
hashes words based on their pronunciation instead of their spelling, could
recognize that a word is "close enough" to a dictionnary entry but not
exactly the same, possibly because it is misspelled.  Words that have no
close match in the dictionnary are simply "unknown".  Perhaps certain
features of of French can be used (like the fact that you can't have four
consonants in a row and three in only certain cases, or that certain
sequences of letters are not part of any French word).

I'd like to hear comments about the "brute force" approach; listing all
non-trivial words in the dictionnary.  How big would it be?  Even if slow,
is it practical?
-- 
Martin Boyer                         ireq-robot!mboyer@Larry.McRCIM.McGILL.EDU
Institut de recherche d'Hydro-Quebec mboyer@ireq-robot.uucp
Varennes, QC, Canada   J3X 1S1
+1 514 652-8136