Martin, I am afraid that won't be sufficient. In the patent application
Microsoft is trying to cover both directions infinitive -> word-form AND
word-form -> infinitive.
Looks like Big Brother some 20 year after.
BTW: Croatian Lemmatization Server (http://hml.ffzg.hr) is doing exactly
this two-way substitution on individual words and/or uploaded files since
2003. Should we, as speakers of inflectionally rich languages, be
particularly afraid?
Marko Tadic
----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin Wynne" <martin.wynne@oucs.ox.ac.uk>
To: <corpora@uib.no>
Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2006 1:01 PM
Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] Microsoft patents verb conjugations
>I think we all need to be a bit more careful what we write and say now,
>unless we want to face hefty bills from MS. I suggest run all text through
>an automatic verb lemmatizer to make sure that we can not be accuse of
>conjugate verbs. Unless there be a patent on lemmatizers...
>
> Martin
>
> Alexandr Rosen wrote:
>> Am I right in assuming that the patent claims apply to ANY language?
>> English and Spanish are mentioned as examples in DETAILED DESCRIPTION, in
>> a part describing "one embodiment" of the system, but I think there is no
>> specific language mentioned in the Claims part. I find it hard to believe
>> that this is not a joke... Alexandr
>>
>>> On 07/09/06, John F. Sowa <sowa@bestweb.net> wrote:
>>>> If anybody has been deriving the infinitive of a verb
>>>> from a finite form, you may be violating a recent patent
>>>> application by Microsoft. (However, I suspect that there
>>>> may be prior art that had been published earlier.)
>>>>
>>>> Following is the title, abstract, and URL.
>>>>
>>>> John Sowa
>>>> _________________________________________________________
>>>>
>>>> Source: http://tinyurl.com/e5g7y
>>>>
>>>> United States Patent Application 20060195313
>>>>
>>>> Voetberg; Eric J.; et al. August 31, 2006
>>>>
>>>> Method and system for selecting and conjugating a verb
>>
>> Alexandr Rosen
>>
>> Institute of Theoretical and Computational Linguistics
>> Faculty of Philosophy and Arts, Charles University, Prague
>>
>> address: UTKL FF UK, Celetna 13, CZ 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic
>> tel.: +420-221619752, e-mail: alexandr.rosen@ff.cuni.cz
>> http://utkl.ff.cuni.cz/~rosen/
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Martin Wynne
> Head of the Oxford Text Archive and
> AHDS Literature, Languages and Linguistics
>
> Oxford University Computing Services
> 13 Banbury Road
> Oxford
> UK - OX2 6NN
> Tel: +44 1865 283299
> Fax: +44 1865 273275
> martin.wynne@oucs.ox.ac.uk
>
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