A Useful Grammar Checker?

burtdub asks: "With the amount of raw text data available, there seems to be no shortage of ambitious language projects on the horizon, from Universal Language Translators to Junk Email Filtering. However, the mess that is the English language still seems to elude commercial attempts while being relatively ignored by the open source community. What would it take to make a useful, functional grammar checker?"

Simple enough.

[FireballX301]

All you need is my 7th grade English teacher staring over your shoulder all day.

That'll get you twisted into shape real good.

Re:Simple enough.

[LiquidCoooled]

My missus does that all the time and when I showed her the original reply I had written she corrected me on that, then went away and banged her head on the wall because she realised what I was posting about.

Hard project to staff

[Raffaello]

What would it take to make a useful, functional grammar checker?

You'd have to find programmers who actually knew correct English grammar.

Re:Nah, just ask Microsoft

[binarybum]

Yes, you right quite are, it's plenty enough superiorly good. Whom was I that did wanted to used they're opened source shit that to?

    I use it all the time, it okay'd this posting.

Re:Easier way

[WindBourne]

You know, the funny thing is, I suspect the idea would work.

Make it for Latin

[ari_j]

The best way to write a useful grammar checker is to write it for a language with a rational syntax.

Re:Make it for Latin

[parvenu74]

Rational syntax? Latin? It's one of the few languages in which you can scramble the order of the words in the sentence and not loose any meaning because the word carries enough meta-data in the form of all of the various endings. Heck, regular verbs alone have 140 different forms, and irregular verbs are exactly that, with unique endings per item. And who's to say that the "nominative-ablative-dative-accusative-verb" syntactical ordering is either correct or ideal? Cicero doesn't write like that half of the time and Caesar almost never did in his "Gallic Wars." And consider that the Catholic Church, which has used Latin as its official language longer than the Romans did, has adopted a simplified vulgatum form officially, not that the various Popes and writers throughout the centuries have bothered to use that instead of the higher-browed Classical Latin.... whose rules are you proposing to follow?

English might actually be an easier task than trying to parse Latin.

Re:Make it for Latin

[ari_j]

All those different forms and the nearly syntax-free sentence structure are precisely why it is easier to parse Latin than English.

Re:Make it for Latin

[Sahib!]

Precisely. GPP said 140 different forms as if that would be a large number for a computer.

Re:Make it for Latin

[the phantom]

Not entirely true. Languages generally fall into one of two categories: word ordered languages, and declined languages (these are not the technical terms -- I can't remember what those terms are). English is very dependent upon word order, as are most Germanic languages. A word's purpose in the sentence is dertermined by its position in the sentence. In languages like Russian and Latin, a word's role is dependent upon prefixes, suffixes, alterations in spelling/pronounciation, &c, and word order is

Re:Make it for Latin

[dgatwood]

The thing is that most Romance languages also have word order restrictions. French, for example, adjectives come after the noun they modify.

What makes English such a pain in the backside is that the language has been so utterly simplified over the millenia that we have lots of words with identical spellings, but different parts of speech. This makes the word order critical.

Technically, word order isn't critical in English. I can say "Campus green and tow'ring trees" and you understand I'm talking about a green campus. This was actually common usage in the not-so-distant past.

The problem, though, is that words have become overloaded and/or multiple words combined to a single term. For example, the green lantern is probably something you carry around to provide light when the power goes out. The Lantern Green is probably a place where they play cricket.

We're seeing this happening with things like "it's vs. its" and "their vs. they're vs. there" in some people's usage as well. Every time the spelling distinction between words breaks down, it becomes significantly more difficult for anything short of a person to get meaning out of a sentence. That's why there are so many spelling/grammar nazis on slashdot. If we don't, in a matter of just a few years, we'll get to the point where nobody can understand anything.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

adjective-noun order in French

[Tumbleweed]

French, for example, adjectives come after the noun they modify.

Actually, that's only true for some adjectives. There is a rule to remember which ones go before the noun: 'BANGS'

B - beauty
A - age
N - numerical order
G - goodness (or badness)
S - size

Everything else goes after the noun.

This has been your online French grammar lesson for the day. :)

Re:adjective-noun order in French

[damiam]

I learned it as T-BANGS, with T standing for truth.

Re:adjective-noun order in French

[P0ldy]

And yet, neither this nor the "adjectives-always-following" former accounts for those adjectives whose meaning changes depending on its placement.

Whereas "ma chambre propre" means "my clean room", "ma propre chambre" means "my own room".

Re:adjective-noun order in French (BANGS)

[geminidomino]

A man's shirt is a feminine object, and a woman's blouse is a masculine object? Why?!

Hey, anything that wants to be pressed against boobies all day can be assumed to be masculine. :)

Fruit flies like a banana

[BlueStraggler]

Is fruit an adjective or a noun? Is flies a noun or a verb? Is like a verb or an adjective?

This requires some serious AI (or just plain I) to sort out. And that only gets you past the subject line. Now re-read each of the sentences in my opening paragraph, but literally this time. Each of them would choke a grammar checker, yet for most readers they will parse perfectly well within the context.

Easier just to pay attention in Grade 7 English class, as someone already pointed out.

Re:Make it for Latin

[brpr]

It's depressing being a linguistics student. Every time a language-related topic is raised you have to listen to people who don't know what they're talking about spouting off and getting modded +5 insightful (or whatever the non-Slashdot equivalent of this accolade may be).

What makes English such a pain in the backside is that the language has been so utterly simplified over the millenia

No, it hasn't been simplified. At least, you won't find any linguist or student of Old or Middle English who'll claim that it has simplified as opposed to changed. Presumably you'll back up this outlandish statement with, say, a detailed analysis of the history of the case system in English from the Norman conquest onwards?

that we have lots of words with identical spellings, but different parts of speech.

Yeah, just like every other language. Do you have any data suggesting that English is unusual in this respect?

This makes the word order critical.

Word order isn't critical because of homographs, it's critical because the rules of English grammar are strict about word order. From a more practical point of view, it's critical because English is too poorly inflected for a parser to work out the structure of a sentence without reference to the order of the words. In any case, there's nothing particularly difficult about parsing languages with strict word order rules, or parsing languages with homophones and homophones, or parsing languages with both.

Every time the spelling distinction between words breaks down, it becomes significantly more difficult for anything short of a person to get meaning out of a sentence.

Not really. The problem of people writing "their" instead of "they're" is absolutely trivial compared to the staggeringly difficult task of accurately parsing natural language, or machine translation, or any other NLP problem of similar complexity. For God's sake, just list "their" as a synonim for "they're" in your parser and it will figure out which meaning was intended from the grammatical structure (there are few, if any, syntactic contexts in which more than one of "there", "their" or "they're" is correct).

If we don't, in a matter of just a few years, we'll get to the point where nobody can understand anything.

People have been saying this for hundreds of years.

So, basically, you've taken one of the most difficult areas of AI (NLP) and argued that it's really difficult these days because sometimes people spell "they're" incorrectly. Weird.

Re:Make it for Latin

[cfuse]

We must polish the Polish furniture.

He could lead if he would get the lead out.

The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

I did not object to the object.

The bandage was wound around the wound.

The farm was used to produce produce.

The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

They were too close to the door to close it.

The buck does funny things when the does are present.

A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

After a number of injections my jaw got number.

Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Re:Make it for Latin

[ari_j]

While I am one to appreciate good grammer and spelling, I hardly think that people English will become more difficult for native speakers to understand or use. As long as everyone screws it up in a consensual manner, we'll know what others mean.

Q.E.D.

English English

[evilandi]

...and unless you're using English English instead of American English. The phrase "green campus" is American English phrase, with no direct translation under English English variants.

I once had a US border security guard ask me whether I spoke English. The temptation to reply "My dear chap, I don't just speak it, I am English!" was almost unbearable, but the nearby box of latex gloves convinced me that the more concise "Yes sir" was more appropriate.

(Anyone who thinks that there is such a standard as "Brit

Re:Make it for Latin

[hunterx11]

Latin only seems more rational because it's dead and its most famous writings had extremely high standards of style and consistency. In reality, languages have rational syntax in the sense that people can understand them, but none have the sort of rational syntax that a computer is good at understanding.

How about LEARNING the English language?

[TripMaster Monkey]

What would it take to make a useful, functional grammar checker

How about a competently taught highschool English class?

Seriously, people...learn to use the language...you'll be better off.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:How about LEARNING the English language?

[Haeleth]

Agreed! We already have the problem of people not knowing how to spell (reliance on spellchecking) and people not being able to do basic math (reliance on calculators) - this would just dumb people down even more.

And don't forget the problem of people not knowing how to shoe a horse (reliance on motor vehicles), or light a fire (reliance on electricity), or plough a field (reliance on supermarkets).

Wait, those aren't problems, they're examples of how the advance of technology has completely obsoleted things that used to be vital life skills. Whereas clearly spelling, grammar, and basic maths are completely different, and we should not be making any effort to help people take their mind away from niggling details and let them concentrate on the content of their writing or the implications of their calculations.

No, wait, I'm still not quite following the logic here...

Re:How about LEARNING the English language?

[PitaBred]

And you wonder why people are stranded on the side of the road with a flat they can't change. You can't abstract out all the mechanics of anything, no matter how advanced.
The problem is that "content" without proper mechanics loses all of it's value, and without proper mechanics built into the content generation process, thoughts are muddled and incoherent. There's no structure enforced. That's why people start thinking crap like Scientology is a good idea. They have no rational thought processes, they're governed solely by "content", ie "emotion". Kinda like the gorillas and monkeys you see in zoo exhibits.

Re:How about LEARNING the English language?

[shmlco]

Sorry, but with writing the word choice, order, syntax, and grammar IS the content.

If spelling and grammar are incorrect, then why should I assume that the content, as you put it, is free of error? If the writer thinks that some details are unimportant and not worthy of attention, then one has to wonder how many other little details in the "content" have been treated equally as well.

Re:How about LEARNING the English language?

[jabuzz]

Except proper grammer is rarely taught in schools these days. Then there is the issue of people with specific learning difficulties for whome this is not just a simple case of learning it.

A *good* grammer checker is a useful tool, that with application will not only improved the quality of a particular piece of text, but over time will improve the standard of your grammer.

The problem is that the grammer checker that most people are exposed to (the one in Microsoft Word) is rubbish. The one in WordPerfect 6.

Re:How about LEARNING the English language?

[jdgeorge]

How about a competently taught highschool English class?

Seriously, people...learn to use the language...you'll be better off.

You must be kidding. That's as ridiculous as suggesting that people could avoid becoming obese by getting regular exercise and eating in moderation. Those views are inherently biased against the people of the southern and rural United States.

Re:How about LEARNING the English language?

[pnatural]

Those views are inherently biased against the people of the southern and rural United States.

As opposed to yours, which are inherently flawed due to your racism, sterotypes, and generalizations.

But don't let consistency get in the way of your bigotry and ignorance!

Re:How about LEARNING the English language?

[ConceptJunkie]

That's as ridiculous as suggesting that people could avoid becoming obese by getting regular exercise and eating in moderation. Those views are inherently biased against the people of the southern and rural United States.

Just like expecting people to not rant like some kind of arrogant know-it-all elitist jerk is inherently biased against posters to /.

Re:How about LEARNING the English language?

[Lifewish]

And all that using computers for vector graphics and the like is damaging the minds of the next generation of mathematicians. Cmon, people, it's basic geometry. Do it in your head, you lazy gits.

The above sentence is extremely dumb. So is the parent post. If anything, a proper (non-MSOffice) grammar checker will improve the grammar of the population by giving them examples of how it should be done. And, even if it doesn't manage that, the research necessary to perfect such a checker will undoubtedly improve

Re:How about LEARNING the English language?

[Deanalator]

Not to be a jerk, but how is that insightful? Its not even really that funny. An open source grammar checker would be extremely useful. Everyone mistypes from time to time, and often times spellcheckes are unable to catch it.

To the best of my knowledge, its one of the harder open problems in the OSS community. Im actually surprised that someone didnt enter something like that into the google summer of code. If I had any idea where to start, I know I would have (and I did consider it). It's a very valid question, and I look forward to seeing if anyone here comes up with any good answers.

Lisa Simpson already did it

[mvaneerde]

Remember Linguo? Or am I dating myself? (ew)

What would it take?

[Shadow Wrought]

What would it take to make a useful, functional grammar checker?

How 'bout useful, functional grammar? Ain't not no problem otherwise, right?

Re:What would it take?

[the phantom]

A linguistics professor is giving a lecture. He explains that in English, prescriptive grammar dictates that a double negative creates a positive, for instance "I ain't got no money" would parse as "I have money." He then goes on to explain that in many languages, a double negative creates a more emphatic negative, for instance, in Russian "U menya nyet nichyevo" (literally, "By me is not had nothing") uses two negative phrases to create a stronger negative. Furthermore, the prof explains, in most languages, using two positives will create a more emphatic positive, or at the very least, will not change the meaning of a phrase, for instance "Yes, I have bananas" is fundamentally the same as "I have bananas." However, the proffessor concludes, in no language does a double positive create a negative.

A student, in the back of the class, muttering under his breath, was heard to utter "Yeah, right."

AI

[Roguelazer]

Grammar can often only be determined by context, especially in English, where the rules of grammar change so much. Until a computer can for itself understand context, no grammar checker can be successful (or even marginally useful). Thus, my answer to your question is two words: "Artificial Intelligence." Artificial stupidity can also be used to simulate bad English.

Re:AI

[tktk]

Artificial stupidity can also be used to simulate bad English.

What's the point in having artificial stupidity when we have natural stupidity in abundance?

Re:AI

[Tumbleweed]

What's the point in having artificial stupidity when we have natural stupidity in abundance?

Because then we can do it so much FASTER! Imagine a Beowulf cluster of artificially stupid computers - we could replace Bush! :)

Re:AI

[PsiPsiStar]

I love Steven Pinker's remark about this; that we know the difference between young women looking for husbands and husbands looking for young women.

But there are some things a grammar checker could readily do; see if a verb should be able to accept a direct object, see if a sentence ends in a preposition, etc.

Re:AI

[Haeleth]

there are some things a grammar checker could readily do . . . see if a sentence ends in a preposition, etc.

Wait, why should a grammar checker be used to enforce pointless and arbitrary style guidelines which have never had any foundation in the usage even of the best writers, let alone served any purpose other than to require hideous contortions from anyone daring to employ phrasal verbs - like "to put up with", in that famous example which I'm sure I don't have to quote?

Bonus points for anyone spotting th

Re:AI

[tool462]

This could probably be easily done, but it neglects the more important between prescriptive grammar (what you get in a text book with all the really weird rules about where to put commas and why your participles shouldn't dangle) and gramamr as it is actually used (I'm always one to happily split an infinitive). In my opinion, a prescriptive grammar should only be enforced to the point where the lack of it impedes understanding.

What is different syntactically between these two sentences?

Oops, that should read...

[tool462]

more important *distinction* between

I should have been more careful in a post about grammar. *G*

Re:AI

[spisska]

But there are some things a grammar checker could readily do; see if a verb should be able to accept a direct object, see if a sentence ends in a preposition, etc.

Sure, but there are plenty of verbs in English that can take an object or not, and plenty of words where the meaning changes (sometimes subtley, sometimes not) depending on whether the verb has an object or not. For example: "I see the house", "I see" (subtle difference); "I'm moving the TV", "I'm moving" (bigger difference); "I'll hang the la

How about a useful, functional grammar?

[Stradenko]

How about a useful, functional grammar? One that the english language apparently lacks.

Garbage in, garbage out and all that rot.

Re:How about a useful, functional grammar?

[javaxman]

How about a useful, functional grammar? One that the english language apparently lacks.

In the comments of every story, there is one concise post that is spot-on. For this story, this is that comment.

If English had a grammar that was easy or worth checking, the tool to do it would exist. As it is, the rules are so convoluted that only a masochist would attempt to put them into computer-executable code.

What do you need?

[slashname3]

How about a dictionary and classes in english, like those given in schools. Should be all that is needed.

Some links to tools

[derek_farn]

There are a few tools available. The problem seems to be getting developers to spend lots of time tuning the rules. Here [knosof.co.uk] is a page listing English language tools + some raw test data.

If you have any other links to tools please let me know.

uhh...

[coop0030]

What would it take to make a useful, functional grammar checker?

1 tbsp of crazy
1 ounce of nuts
4 cups of pure genius
1/2 tsp of wit
5 gallons of caffeine*

*Your product of choice.

The power of community

[14erCleaner]

What would it take to make a useful, functional grammar checker?

Just post the text to slashdot, wait for the flames, and do the opposite of what they suggest.

SourceForge

[Noksagt]

The sourceforge link in the summary didn't require all words in the search. Requiring BOTH 'english' and 'grammar' yielded a few interesting projects:

Queequeg [sourceforge.net], an English grammar checker for non-native English speakers

LanguageTool [danielnaber.de], an Open Source language checker for the English and German language.

graviax [sourceforge.net], Grammar rules (XML files containing regular expressions) and grammar checker.

Yes, they are even less developed than commercial alternatives. But they are all interesting starts...

Queequeg

[Noksagt]

The webpage [sourceforge.net] for Queequeg gives a good overview that the sourceforge project page lacks (and the link on the sourceforge page to their webpage is for a non-english index).

What would it take?

[parvenu74]

What would it take to make a useful, functional grammar checker?

An act of God, essentially. Who's going to write such a program, the English teachers? Have you noticed that programmers are not exactly ideal gramarians?

Re:What would it take?

[kelnos]

Have you noticed that programmers are not exactly ideal gramarians?

No, actually, I hadn't. Some of the better programmers I know are above average in their language skills. I'm not surprised, either. After all, when you break it down, it's just ordered syntax: something programmers can generally handle pretty well.

Hell, a good number of the programmers I know don't even speak English as their native language, and yet their written English skills are better than many native speakers.

Re:What would it take?

[TekPolitik]

Some of the better programmers I know are above average in their language skills.

Programmers who are also lawyers have even stronger language skills. Study of the law leads to an appreciation for the value of precision that you do not get from a discipline where you can test your own work (within reason) - in the law if you fail to be sufficiently precise, you will find out when the judge slaps you down.

A useful, functioning language

[bahwi]

I love that old joke, what's so hard about the english language?

Plural of Goose is Geese
Plural of Moose is Moose.

Tooth, Teeth
Booth, Booth

What's not to get?
(More at places like this: http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Literacy/reading.asp [edu-cyberpg.com] )

Re:A useful, functioning language

[bahwi]

Ah! I thought I corrected it!

Booth, Booths

Damnit. I even saw that error! D'oh!

Bask in it!

[TheTranceFan]

Ahhh the irony of asking Slashdot how to build a grammar checker!

Its easy

[jamesl]

You mean the U of Wash prof, Sandeep Krishnamurthy, http://sandeepworld.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com] who criticized MS Word's grammar checker in March http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/28/192323 1/ [slashdot.org] http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/217802_gram mar28.asp/ [nwsource.com] hasn't done it already? He made it sound so easy.

Biofeedback

[Doc Ruby]

People are always making these grammar checkers that work "from the inside out": look at the words, surround them with expectations of what words can agree with them grammatically, and flag contradictions. But humans are interactive with language, like everything else we do. Proper speakers and writers of English are good listeners (and readers). When we hear what we've said, we imagine what that would mean to us if it had been said to us. When the words make us think of something different from what we though before we said them, we correct ourselves. A better grammar checker might work "from the outside in": compose imagery or relationships between recorded objects as represented in the written words, and show implications to the writer, to match against their expectations.

That might be a mightily complex undertaking, akin to a machine "understanding" the words. But it would replicate the feedback we humans already use to keep our grammar correct, and to understand each other. If we aimed that high, we could probably find a less ambitious assistance that's easier to automate, but goes a long way towards helping us express our words to computers, and to each other using computers.

Integer overflow on irony meter

[Ronald Dumsfeld]

I have absolutely no idea what the appropriate requirements for a grammar checking engine would be.

However, I doubt slashdot would be an appropriate place to seek advice on the subject.

English is a complex and "dirty" language, effective usage can involve breaking what are the accepted rules.

Grammatik

[Noksagt]

Back when WordPerfect was actually giving MS Word a fight, grammatik was a great grammar checking program for DOS, Windows, Macintosh and Unix & years ahead of anything which made it into MS Word. It was developed by Reference Software, before WordPerfect acquired them. I assume Corel still has this & uses it in their WordPerfect Office Suite.

Not perfect (our language is eccentric & computers are stupid), but the best I've seen.

Re:Grammatik

[salesgeek]

Grammatik is still a part of the WP product line. It is a quantum leap better than nearly anything I've seen. It also integrated a writer's handbook which allowed you to understand not just that there was an error, but why that error was thre. In college I learned more about English from Grammatik than I did from all of my the English classes combined.

Shame that there isn't a stand alone verson still around. It was truly outstanding, and still to this day is vastly superior to anything I've used.

what would it take?

[RapmasterT]

What would it take to make a useful, functional grammar checker?"

It would start with a programmer with a solid command of good grammar.

so it will take a miracle.

English needs to be mutable.

[vertinox]

One of the concepts that most people should realize is that the main success (and downfall) of the English language is that it can mutate quite easily.

Remember... English is the bastard child of Celtic, Latin, and various other Germanic languages. Language also affects the way the way we think and also is the key limiting factor in grasping concepts.

If your language cannot express a certain concept then you need a way to bend the rules (which English has a bad habit of doing) so that you can share that idea with others.

To enforce a view or a proper method of speaking will often stagnate a societies ability to assimilate new ideas or methods. George Orwell pointed this out when he came up with the idea for new speak in which society can restrain itself from unwanted aspects by removing societies ability to even discuss it.

We obviously do not speak Elizabethan English or the olde English of the Middle ages. Should our descendants be forced to speak an archaic language 200 years from now because we demanded to have our software set in stone what is the proper way to express ideas and communication.

Man, this sounds a bit hippy-esque, but hopefully you understand what I mean.

Still there should be some ground rules to what proper English is and should be so we can understands each other without going "Huh?" but it shouldn't be a hard-line stance that is unchangeable for the next 50 years.

Two englishes are coming

[hawk]

American and British English remain, for the most part, mutually intelligible. They have largely drifted together.

However, that has happened with a large english speaking population.

I'm expecting it to split over time into an international english, which will be largely today's american english, and whatever the english speaking countries drift into speaking. I suppose that they *could* be enough of an anchor to slow the mutation of the language, but I doubt it. I'm even more skeptical of the idea that the now established international english would follow the changes of the native speakers--there's no reason for a french-speaker and a korean speaker, both of whom speak english as an international language, to change their english due to americans or brits.

hawk

Re:Two englishes are coming

[csirac]

I agree about there possibly being an evolution of a "standardised" usage of english (a set of common , boring vocabulary without too much redundancy) by non-english speaking nations doing business with each other, but in my experience it does not seem to be based on American english.

Granted, I haven't had that much experience (I've never even left Australia), but the foreign exchange students I know have all used British conventions, not American. This would include persons from: Italy, Ukrain, Germany, Fi

Re:English needs to be mutable.

[dbIII]

We obviously do not speak ... the olde English of the Middle ages.

Try reading "Canterbury Tales" aloud - once you get past the spelling it is surprisingly similar to the english we speak nearly 800 years on. If more people on slashdot read this there would be less people complaining about spelling and grammar here, it really doesn't matter in an informal forum, and even in some more formal settings.

ground rules to what proper English is and should be so we can understands each other without going "Huh?"

Th

Re:English needs to be mutable.

[Mr. Bad Example]

> Try reading "Canterbury Tales" aloud - once you get past the spelling it is surprisingly similar to the english we speak nearly 800 years on.

Well, yes and no. True, Chaucer-era Middle English had lost most of the inflections of Old English (vestiges of which linger in things like pronoun cases to this day) and picked up a lot of vocabulary from the Norman invaders, but it didn't really sound like modern English. That wouldn't happen until the Great Vowel Shift around the 15th and 16th centuries.

Re:English needs to be mutable.

[Mr. Bad Example]

A couple of nitpicks here:

> Remember... English is the bastard child of Celtic, Latin, and various other Germanic languages.

English isn't really related to the Celtic languages. There are a few Celtic loan words, but that's about it. Also, Celtic languages and Latin aren't Germanic. You can see the relationships here [danshort.com].

Interest

[kevin_conaway]

What would it take? Someone who REALLY REALLY cares about this stuff or someone with a lot of money.

Ever notice how the open source community is full of really cool 90% finished products? People like to spend their spare time doing stuff thats fun, not mundane crap that occupies 10% of software development.

If you need applications like a grammar checker or that other 10% of "cool" software to be built, you will most likely have to pay someone to do it.

Re:Interest

[rumblin'rabbit]

Ever notice how the open source community is full of really cool 90% finished products? People like to spend their spare time doing stuff thats fun, not mundane crap that occupies 10% of software development.

But as we all know, that last 10% takes 90% of the time. Thus people are really only doing 10% of the project.

What it would take

[winkydink]

What would it take to make a useful, functional grammar checker?

Paying attention in high school English classes coupled with mandatory testing for proficiency as a graduation requirement.

Hmm...

[MBCook]

I cain't think of any reasons why programmer's times are spent making that kind a software. Maybe they just dont have alot of reasons for needing them.

Computational Linguistics

[Nasarius]

Based on the fact that you posted this to Ask Slashdot, you probably need to start by studying the work that has already been done in the field of computational linguistics [unizh.ch]. Read the journals. Then figure out how to apply your knowledge.

It will take more than a big pile of text

[Ogemaniac]

Natural language is built upon context - who is speaking to whom, where they are located, tone and body language, and the meanings they are trying to convey. Simply mapping correlations between words in one language and another will get you nowhere. Better versions of Babelfish will still be babble.

I am currently living in Japan and learning the language. Here is a simple phrase that I was thinking about the other night...pretty much first-year college level Japanese.

Japanese version:

Itta koto g

Descriptor approach

[adam.conf]

A possibility is to assign every word in a sentence a number of descriptors (tense, part of speech, etc...) and see if they are in a logical order. For example:

I use a grammer checker.

Nominative Pronoun, present tense transitive action verb, general article for non-vowel sounds, adjective, noun.

Simiilarily, She kick a red ball would have the same pattern.

Assuming that an adequate dictionary is compiled (containing all the descriptors, relying on context for a word such as "grammer" (if before n

Re:Descriptor approach

[bluestar]

That's great! Too bad you spelled grammar wrong. Repeatedly :)

Dr. Grammar FAQ

[Noksagt]

Well with the frequently asked questions (I'd hate to see the infrequently asked ones!) on Dr. Grammar [drgrammar.org], I'd say that it is a monstrous task to make a good checker. Grammaticians don't even agree on what is grammatically correct.

Yoda Says

[Linker3000]

A grammar checker need I not.

WTF??

[Soko]

Why would anyone think that technology could provide a check to see if thier Grandma is still useful? Of all the insensitive, downright cold things to ask for...

Soko

Useful grammar checker?

[nightsweat]

There isn't any. :)

the English language

[falconwolf]

A good place to start on English is Richard Lederer's "CRAZY ENGLISH" [amazon.com]. If nothing else, it's entertaining.

Falcon

Why?

[surfinokie]

If the /. community provides any indication, good grammar checkers wouldn't be used even if they existed. Spell checkers work very well and no one seems to pay them any heed.

AI

[Bastian]

I am not a computational linguist, but here's my take on the situation:

There are all sorts of ambiguities in the English language - you have to be able to understand what part of speech a word is at the moment, and in order to do that you often have to understand enough context to use clues from neighbouring sentences. Oftentimes the grammar checker is going to have no clue what part of speech a word takes, for the same reason that your spellchecker frequently complains about words you spelled correctly.

In

To everyone...

[MaestroSartori]

...saying "Just learn the grammar correctly in the first place", here's a question: can you really see no use in a computerised tool to help you learn correct grammatical usage?

It's like someone coming on asking about natural media painting apps being told "Just go to art school and learn how to use REAL paint, you lazy bastard!" - you're missing the point entirely. A grammar checker would be useful even for people with a decent grasp of grammar, as a double-check. Like spell checking, do you get it yet?

There is no English Grammar

[rufusdufus]

English has no fixed grammar. The language is organic. What does this mean? It means that there are no fixed rules that define proper sentence structure, instead it is a fuzzy set. The set changes with each new speaker.

If there is no grammar for English, then what is it that your teachers taught you in grammer school? Simply this: Class. Thats right, what you are learning when you study grammar is social cueing that signals what social class you belong too. This works both ways; the 'educated elite' h

Commercial's Not Much Better

[suwain_2]

Microsoft Word has a great spell checker. Not only does it flag the wrong words, but half the time, it's correctly fixing stupid typos. Word isn't the only spell checker that works well; I'd argue that everything I've used lately, except for Lotus Notes, does a fabulous job.

However, I'm yet to see a 'grammar checker' that works well at all. I don't believe we will anytime soon, either. The reason is that English syntax can be somewhat insane, and is full of exceptions. It's easy to say that "teh" should be

best solution:

[circletimessquare]

1. break text source into a handful of slashdot comments, and submit each comment

2. wait for the inevitable uppity howling condescending grammar nazi to response to whatever grammatical errors exist, however slight or unimportant

3. reassemble text source and apply grammar nazis' edits

voila! grammar checking via redundant network of distributed grammar nazis (tm)

Re:best solution:

[the phantom]

there should be a comma between 'uppity' and 'howling'
there should be a comma between 'howling' and 'condescending'
'response' should be 'respond'
'voila' should be capitalized
should read: 'via [a|the] redundant' OR 'via redundant networks'
there should be a period after '(tm)'

I have answer!

[jam244]

I think *I* write grammar checker is ok?

Erm, um, actually...

[Hosiah]

What grammer-checking was done in M$ Word, as I recall, bore no resemblance to English as given in my English books. I quit using it, like I did eventually with all M$ products.

Grammer checking is a thousand-fold more complicated than most people realize. English's hoary syntax, which pretty much boils down to "8 million exceptions in search of a rule", doesn't parse easily into computer code.

But I, too, would be interested in seeing this field develop - because it has the side effect of making bot AI better! Now, a voice-activated console that understood commands in plain, sloppy English would be worth striving for. Grammer-checking in a word-processor usually just provokes me: "How *dare* you red-line this sentence; I'm quoting *Shakespeare*, you illiterate rock!"

But we'll have perfect machine-generated grammer before we've reached the level of innovation required to put a spell-checker on the comment box on Slashdot!

Why would open source people need grammar checkers

[caffiend666]

Why would open source people need grammar checkers? All we have to do is post a message to Slashdot and it will be prodded, poked, parsed, and insulted until nothing is left, it's great! Spelling, grammar, translation, jargon checking, and even *^%hole tests are available! We don't even have to be on topic, any message can be submitted....

Why it's needed -- Aircraft communications

[ankhank]

Among other examples ....

  Crew confusion found in Athens plane crash
By Don Phillips International Herald Tribune

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2005
PARIS The crew members of a Cypriot airliner that crashed Aug. 14 near Athens became confused by a series of alarms as the plane climbed, failing to recognize that the cabin was not pressurizing until they grew mentally disoriented because of lack of oxygen and passed out.... .... neither the German pilot nor the young, inexperienced Cypriot co-pilot could speak the same language fluently, and each had difficulty understanding how the other spoke English, the worldwide language of air traffic control. ...
The plane had a sophisticated new flight data recorder that provided a wealth of information. ...
At 10,000 feet, or 3,000 meters, as designed, an alarm went off to warn the crew that the plane would not pressurize. ... ....
  At 14,000 feet, oxygen masks deployed as designed and a master caution light illuminated in the cockpit. Another alarm sounded at about the same time on an unrelated matter, warning that there was insufficient cooling air in the compartment housing avionics equipment.

The radio tapes showed that this created tremendous confusion .... the crew at over 14,000 feet would already be experiencing some disorientation because of a lack of oxygen.

During this time, the German captain and the Cypriot co-pilot discovered they had no common language and that their English, while good enough for normal air traffic control purposes, was not good enough for complicated technical conversation in fixing the problem....

Too Young

[sysadmn]

Jeez, how you younguns forget! In my day, we had style and diction [gnu.org], and we liked it. None of that fancy-schmancy parsing irregular grammar, just pattern match a few of the worst cases, throw out a few statistics, and wow!
Of course, that was when the line printer was state of the art, and you had to cut your printout into sheets to turn your English assignment in, and two or three nroff submissions could bring the PDP 11-44 to its knees...

Re:No need

[HermanAB]

Yo don't knead no speling chekir eathir.

Re:The Elements of Style and a good eye.

[iced_773]

Speaking of The Elements of Style, the full text of the book can be found here [orwell.ru]. It's online now. Use it.

Re:Use south london grammar

[kongjie]

Don't South Londoners also say "I were..."? Or is that characteristic of another region?

Re:Don't hold your breath

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

While cooking dinner, my dog threw up on the carpet.

It's a correct, grammar wise, but nearly everyone who reads it sees what's wrong right away.

(hehe..."a correct, grammar wise"...but I digress.)

A) What's wrong? Oh, are you making an assumption that dogs can't cook dinner? How do you know I'm not writing a childrens' story about magic dogs? And no, I'm not being pedantic. How do you know that a participle is indeed dangling without having massive amounts of context (so much that you end up with a comprehend

Re:simply: don't

[Red Flayer]

5 errors?

"Grammer [1,sp] checkers aren't [2, written communication should not use contractions] half as useful as spellcheckers. While most people regularly stumble upon words they don't [3, contraction] immediately [4, split infinitive] know how to spell, only the most useless dumbwits[5, not a word] have grammar problems. It's [6, contraction; 7, unclear precedent] because grammar is important not only for writing, but also in speech [missing comma, but debateable, so not counted] and therefore traine

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion