Write rules in Japanese

Supported sentence structures

The Japanese parser supports Subject – Object – Verb (SOV) sentences. The subject or object part may contain additional verbs. Such verbs are ignored since the ending verb is the active verb for the sentence.

Supported verb forms

Japanese verbs conjugate for politeness level, tense, aspect, voice and sense:

 

In Oracle Policy Modeling, the verbs list contains entries for the following combinations:

Level

Tense

Aspect

Voice

Sense

Polite

Present, past

  Perfect

  Active, passive

Positive, negative

Polite

Present, past

  Progressive

  Active

Positive, negative

Polite

Present, past

  Potential

  Active

Positive, negative

Plain

Present, past

  Perfect

  Active, passive

Positive, negative

Plain

Present, past

  Progressive

  Active

Positive, negative

Plain

Present, past

  Potential

  Active

Positive, negative

 

For each of the above forms, the verbs are inflected by suffixing some ending based on which verb group they belong to. The three verb groups covered by the Japanese parser are:

  1. ichidan verbs – ending in -eru or -iru, eg kangaeru
  2. godan verbs – ending in -u such as -ru, -tsu and -ku, eg matsu
  3. irregular verbs – ending in -kuru or -suru, including kuru and suru

(All forms of Japanese verbs end in the -u sound. This form is the plain, present, active verb form.)

The verbs do not inflect for gender or person.

The copula だ (da) which is the infinitive form of  です (desu), and である (dearu) which is the infinitive form of であります, have been included in the verbs list.

For compound verbs where only the second verb is inflected, eg benkyo + suru, suru is taken to be the active verb. For such noun + suru verbs, there is no need to enter the compound verbs separately as long as suru is in the verbs list.

The automatic verb conjugations works for the majority of the ichidan and godan verbs. The conjugations for irregular verbs, and verbs where the use of kanji character introduces ambiguity as to whether the verb is ichidan or godan, will have to be entered manually. See Configure list of recognized verbs for more information.

Adjectives

In an SOV sentence, the verb at the end is taken to be the active verb. If adjectives are present within the sentence, they are not inflected.

In a verbless sentence, the adjectives may be inflected. There are two form of Japanese adjectives, the -na adjectives and the -i adjectives.

In both the above scenarios and also for an SOV sentence, when the uncertain form is constructed the copula is omitted.

Limitations

The parser only supports a limited number of counter words such as those for age, number of people etc.

The following verb inflections are currently not handled.

  1. Presumptive mood – expresses probability, belief or intention (~daro/~desho forms)
  2. Imperative mood – expresses commands
  3. Causative mood – conveys the idea of making or causing someone to do something
  4. Conditional mood – conveys 'if',  'unless', 'when' meaning (~eba/~tara/~nara/~to forms)
  5. Clauses – conveys sequential, parallel or causal relationships (such as the ~te and ~de forms)
  6. Necessity – expresses 'must' or 'necessity' using the to-ikenai form

The first three forms are unlikely to occur in the OPA rulebase framework.

For the fourth and fifth verb forms, OPA has an existing framework for expressing conditionals and clausal relationships when developing a rulebase. As such, these verb inflections are redundant. For the sixth form, expressing 'must', the sentence should be rephrased, for example using the verb 'obligated'.

For example, look at the following sentences.

Example 1 - Conditional mood

The person is eligible if the person pays tax.

当人は税金を払ったら、適格である。

 

In Oracle Policy Modeling this should be written as two separate sentences where the first one is formatted as the conclusion and the second one as the level 1 condition.

The person is eligible.

当人は適格である。

The person pays tax.

当人は税金を払います。

Example 2 - Clauses

The person is retired and the person’s age is greater than 65.

当人は退職していて、(年齢が)65歳以上である。

 

The above sentence should be broken down into two separate discrete sentences.

The person is retired and

当人は退職している。および

The person’s age is greater than 65

当人は(年齢が)65歳以上である。

 

Here the sentences represent two conditions that need to occur simultaneously. This will be reflected by the 'and' rather than inflecting the verb to the -te form. Thus, if there are sentences where verb forms that are not covered by the verb editor are used, you should try to rewrite them as separate attributes especially when the sentences are clausal in nature.

Example 3 - Necessity

For expressing necessity, sentences should be rephrased to use a noun + copula form. Another way is to simply rephrase the sentences. For example,

'A person must have a pension card changes' to

'A person owns a pension card'.