A.S. Dubovitsky, V.T. Trofimov
Lyceum of Mathematics and Computer Science
Using AI (Artificial Intellect) in Research
Through the Example of the Linguistic Study of English Syllables
Article tutor: N.V. Shkodina, Teacher
Nowadays creating anything involves research, quiet massive, in fact. It is rather complicated for a human to handle it alone, to perform it fast and without any
errors. Yet, there is somebody capable to do such a thing, and they are usually called
genii, but not all of us can be called such, however we have an intelligent-andpatient-and-very-careful-and-memorizing thing - a computer. And now, as they are
widespread, fast and quickly programmed, it is time for them to take all the research
job because they are likely not to error and can compare and analyze giant amounts
of raw data in milliseconds.
This article is dedicated to the description of the research that has been undertaken in order to develop a phonetic translation app that can work as a tool in dividing English words into syllables.
Every global research needs many resources, so, to make it on his/her own a
human needs a number of months or even years. But modern computers can make
them thousand times faster and more accurately, at the same time as the human can
do his/her own business without any monotonous work.
Objectives:
1. To understand how to perform the syllable division
2. To create a special app within a year
3. To limit the number of people involved up to 100
4. To analyze errors and try to eliminate them
5. To sum the results up
Trusting intuition
After about four unsuccessful prototypes of syllable division, the best algorithm was only 60% successful in its proper function. Therefore, there were many attempts to do a research how it has to be done and neither the book of English grammar mentioned anything about that nor websites and teachers did.[1]
The rhythm turned out to be the core of syllable division, and we made an attempt to write the program that would be able to make a research over it for us. It had
to split the syllables of the words on letters and count the number of the consonants
and vowels in each syllable to make the rhythm.
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How we did that
1. Nothing strict
2. Let it think for itself
3. Compared multiple factors
4. Checked in-between results
5. Visualized results (made all the thing more clearly)[2]
Working principles of the research using AI
Stage 1 (preparation)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Took2000+ most common English words [1]
Excluded combinations like *n’t, *‘ve, etc...
Used the internet resources for receiving a right syllable division [3]
Got a number of consonants and vowels in each syllable
Checked the most typical behavior for open\close\long\short syllables
Graphically represented current results
Stage 2 (analysis)
1.
Learned typical structures and how they are usually preformed
2.
Examined words which length and syllable amount were more typical
for such structures
3.
Figured out which structures were most frequent and which were the rar[ref]
est
4.
Gave the final results
Stage 3 (post-fixing)
1.
2.
3.
Post-checked
Found exceptions
Figured out meanings of side-factors

Endings

Suffixes

2+ rooted words

Paired vowels

Dropped vowels
What it has given to us
So, based on our research it seems that the syllable division in English is really
based on pronouncing the rhythm and sticks to several basic structures how side factors are likely to influence that rhythm, also we got the frequency for all those factors,
which are to be used to prioritize the attempt to commit each of those to target a
word.
2
The research has given to us the sufficient results for begging to invent the
main syllable division algorithm, we are also going to research how the stress is set,
and it seems that there might be some complex, but general rule.
Moreover, thecomputer research has given the result within one week that can
be clearly very fast and valuable for users.
Results
The field of the main interface is divided into columns. Every next column is a
next syllable, lines are stages (bottom line means 1 letter (vowel or consonant), next
line means 2 letters etc.). So, dots show the count of vowels and consonants in each
syllable. Blue color means consonant, red color means vowel, violet means that
counts of consonants and vowels are equal.
Basic structures

Column

Ladder up

Dot
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Frequency of the rhythms
Frequency of the endings
Side factors

Dropped vowels usually cause Waves

Paired vowels usually make graph simpler
4

Endings’n’ suffixes are the main cause of a definition problem,
roots all sick to 1 of the basic structures (They are also cause for both ramps
and hills usually)

2 roots are defined by division into 2 independent graphs
References
1.
2.
3.
O.V.AfanasyevaEnglish(1-11) .Prosveschenie, 2012
AarronWalterDesigning for Emotion. A book apart, 2012. P.25
thefreedictionary.com
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