Limitations
For a crash course on Japanese grammar, please take a look at my Essential Japanese Grammar Guide.
The goal with this project was to create a formal grammar that could be used to generate and recognize basic Japanese sentences and write a Java program that followed the rules of the grammar to detect valid Japanese sentences. Given our limited timeframe, the group chose to impose the following restrictions:
- Tenses: Past/present (present, future, and infinitive are essentially the same in Japanese)/present participle.
- Sentence structure: Subject-Object-Verb format. (ignoring the tendency to rearrange parts of speech in casual Japanese)
- Adverbs: Adverbs were only allowed to modify verbs, not adjectives or other adverbs.
- Formal speech: Restricted to the dictionary form of verbs rather than using verb conjugations associated with the various levels of politeness.
- Verbs: Verbs were allowed to be "nounified".
- Adjectives: A small number of adjectives were selectedto act as verbs and take the place of the verb clause.
- Vocabulary: We limited ourselves to the vocabulary standard for the lowest level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT N5)