ABOUT THE PROJECT
In 2015 we came up with the idea to create Lithuanian Grammar Information System (LIGIS), and the presentation “Information System of the Lithuanian Grammar” (authors: Daiva Šveikauskienė – ILL, and Elena Stankevič –VGTU) submission for the conference “The 5th Biennial Workshop on Balto-Slavic Natural Language Processing” (BSNLP 2015) held in Bulgaria was the first attempt to bring it to light.
In 2016 Daiva Šveikauskienė brought together five specialists from various institutions: Daiva Šveikauskienė (ILL) – project manager; Arūnas Ribikauskas (VGTU) – database design and update; Karolina Piaseckienė (ŠU) – Lithuanian data preparation; Vytautas Šveikauskas (VMU) – website design; Vytautas Zinkevičius (ILL) – inflectional form generation. This group prepared one verb—„bėgti“ (to run)—model with every possible derivative and its inflectional forms within a year. The database consisted of 24,762 records. This undertaking was sponsored by Vytautas Landsbergis Fund (Vytauto Landsbergio fondas).
From 2017 to 2021 we continued working in the Institute of Lithuanian Language according to the Long-Term Institutional Program of Scientific Research and Experimental Development “Fundamental and Applied Research of Lexis, Lexical Semantics, and Terminology of Lithuanian Language”: In 2017 the database structure was expanded by including shortened word endings. Such list for the root “bėg” (run) was 3,560 records long. In 2018 derivatives of the verb “skraidyti” (to fly), as well as their inflectional forms, were added (3,546 records), in 2019 – its gerunds (166), half-participles (304), gerundive participles (155), passive participles (1,096), active participles (6,456), 8,177 records in total. In 2020 we added verb “skrajoti” (to fly around) compounds and their inflectional forms: nouns and adjectives (140), verbs (1,990) active participles (5,496), passive participles (1,225), gerundive participles (164), half-participles (234), gerunds (248), 9,470 records in total. At the moment, there are 49,515 records in our database.
LIGIS development according to the Long-Term Program is carried out by:
Daiva Šveikauskienė, PhD – project manager, ILL scientific researcher.
Exclusive features of the Lithuanian Grammar Information System:
- The goal is to prepare a documentation of Lithuanian grammar.
- System is based on non-statistical methods, ergo zero error tolerance.
- The morpheme type is specified for the first time.
- Every possible Lithuanian word is presented, since all possible morpheme combination is computer-generated, we include derivatives like “nebeatsinešti” (not to bring again) that are not listed in dictionaries.
- Word's inflection table can be found by clicking the button OTHER FORMS.
- There are some examples given with all inflected forms of the word “bėgti” alongside case forms of the derived word “bėgis“.
- The website LIGIS can also be used on mobile phones.
- The website is presented in seven languages: Lithuanian, English, German, French, Italian, Russian, and Japanese.
Acknowledgments:
Arūnas Ribikauskas, PhD for database design and maintenance,
Daiva Murmulaitytė, PhD for consulting on Lithuanian grammar issues,
Vytautas Zinkevičius for giving permissions to use the software of the morphological synthesis of the Lithuanian language created by him. It was needed for generating the word forms for the LIGIS database,
Christa Schneider for translating the website into German language,
prof. Danguolė Melnikienė for translating the website into French language,
Adriano Cerri, PhD for translating the website into Italian language,
prof. Sergejus Temčinas for translating the website into Russian language,
Simona Vasilevskytė and Kayako Takagi for translating the website into Japanese language.
Please send any comments and suggestions to daiva.sveikauskiene@lki.lt.
ABOUT PRESENTED INFORMATION
While preparing the database, several sources describing the Lithuanian Grammar was reviewed. In some cases, the differences were found between the distinct sources regarding the same points, so the version closest to the theory taught in schools these days was chosen. Morphological data is presented as in www.šaltiniai.info.