A Lexical-Functional Model for Machine Translation of English Zero-place Predicators into Persian

Abstract

Comparative analysis of English and Persian sentence structures reveals that though zero-place predicators are one of predicator types in English, they do not exist in Persian. So, generating a natural translation of them especially in machine translation systems is essential. This study aimed to show that utilizing Lexical-Functional Grammar for a machine translation system which is designed for translation of some English zero-place predicators is able to produce a natural translation of them into Persian. To accomplish this purpose, after determination of part of speech of words of the sentences in C-structure and grammatical function of noun phrases present in the source language (i.e. English) sentence in F-structure, the suitable equivalence was selected for each word and finally the sentence was generated in target language (i.e. Persian). The findings of the present research suggest that English zero-place predicators translated into Persian by a lexical-functional machine are more natural and also they are based on Persian word order.