kwl

KWL is a semantic representation of natural language. A KWL representation can be transformed into any natural language with a grammar and a dictionary of that language.

For example, <kwl nom:dog ; kwl> becomes [kraman (Akan), dog (English), chien (French)]

<kwl pro:you tdy(tu(act:be)) det:a(adj:important_nom:person). ; kwl> becomes [ You are an important person (English) ]

Try it here: http://write.kasahorow.org/kwl

Installation

python setup.py install

Testing

You can transform simple English into KWL representation, and then convert the KWL representation into any of the supported languages. Note that all the text is in lowercase.

Text to KWL

• python -m kwl 'the dog'

KWL to Text

• python -m kwl 'det:the_nom:dog' akan
• python -m kwl 'det:the_nom:dog' english
• python -m kwl 'det:the_nom:dog' oromoo
• python -m kwl 'det:the_nom:dog' swahili

Supported kasahorow languages

This means that you can get functional representations suitable for children's comprehension into these languages. You still need a native speaker to confirm correctness!

• akan
• chewa
• gadangme
• gbe
• gikuyu
• hausa
• igbo
• lingala
• luganda
• luwo
• oromoo
• shona
• swahili
• yoruba
• zulu

How to add a new language foo

This is simple to do. There are 2 main steps:

• add a dictionary of the foo in the data/ directory: data/english_foo_woaka.tsv
• set up grammar rules for foo the data/ directory: data/sua_foo.py

Testing language foo

There are 2 main testing steps:

• Run python kwl_coverage.py foo to see what tests you need to add in the next step
• Run python kwl_tests.py foo by adding foo into the KWL_TESTS dictionary.

Known issues

• No support for noun-adjective alliteration (relevant for Bantu languages such as Shona, Swahili, Ururimi)
• No support for vowel-harmony (relevant for Kwa languages such as Akan)
• Partial support for pluralization
• Partial support for stemming